When we last looked in on my forest in progress, it was pretty much uniformly green. In the mean time, I have made some improvements.

Here’s a shot of the ground as it looks now. I applied patches of brownish green moss to add color variation and slight differences in terrain. I also purchased a bag of brown "crinkle paper," also called "basket shred," which is sold for packaging purposes. I cut it into strips and glued it down to represent humus.

And here’s my temporary forest backdrop. Yes, that’s the sky fabric that I paid north of $30.00 for. It’s much easier to see the forest against this backdrop than against the deciduous forest used previously.

My sticks are standing in for trees, surrounded by the new addition of underbrush. To make the underbrush, I purchased two sprays of plastic greenery, one with elliptical leaves, one with round leaves. I then separated three or four stems’ worth from the main bunch and prepared a base for them out of polymer clay: a mound with tapered edges. I jammed the stems into the base, then pulled them out, thus making guide holes. After painting the base green, I cured the polymer clay, which both dried the paint and hardened the clay! [I hate waiting for paint to dry.] I used hot glue to secure the stems in the guide holes, then a combination of hot glue and white glue to make "tree skirts" out of moss to blend the bases in with the rest of the ground cover.

Further thoughts:

• My trees really need help. They need weighted bases, for which I should break out the Aves Apoxie Sculpt that I have lying around. I also need to head into the local woods again to get some twigs with which to make saplings. I can stick some twigs in the bases for the trees to make clumps of trees.
• I should also make some clumps of saplings + underbrush. I might need some more plastic greenery for this….
• Not sure if the fauxliage — 1:6 scale leaf garlands from Andrea — that I have lying around will be incorporated into this set.

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