Although I have not started a new layout yet, I like to try to make scenery material. I bought an old blender at the salvation army for I think $2. I put in some leaves, small wood chips from the flower bed, kernels from a crepe myrtle, crepe myrtle tree bark that fell off and some moss mix from hobby lobby that I had left over. I churned that up a few times and this is the ground cover I came up with. If I mix up more material, I will put this mix back in the blender with the new material. If you guys have a different way of making scenery material please post.
That's great! It would look quite realistic as ground debris in a patch of trees. There are a few places nearby where I take walks that look just like that in the fall. Nice work!
To avoid bugs and other nasties from being on your layout, bake it in an oven at 200°F for 10-15 mins to dry it out and kill any undesirables that may be trying to hitch a ride. Looks like a great way to do it low-buck!
I have a new project I am working on and will post progress in the next couple of days. In the mean time, I painted these items and not sure what to do with them. Maybe a flat car load, a gondola load or just stack them along the rails. They come out of a medicine bottle that keeps moisture out of the medicine. Any ideas on this?
Those look good. Hard to judge the size for sure but they look like they would make an interesting load for a gondola.
They could make some nice pole-mounted transformers (the ones that take 14.4kV down to 120/240V house current) with some additions such as insulators.
Don't know how this project will turn out so don't be too hard on me. I have a pile of scrap pieces of plastic that I have been keeping. I decided to try and make a scrap pile for a junk yard. I cut some cardboard out and hot glued the pieces together than I hot glued a dryer sheet to that. Than I started hot gluing the scrap to the foundation . Than I ran out of hot glue. I will pick up some tomorrow and finish the job than paint. Will post picture when I finish.
In my much younger years I built terrain like that. Only without the junk pile. But, it still brought back memories.
That's a great idea! My scrap yard was on hold for a while, but your idea has jump-started it back to life. Thanks!
Finished with the hot glue and put a coat of slate paint on the pile. I don't have any rust color paint so I will try and mix colors together to make rust.
I mixed some colors to make a rust looking paint. After that dried, I dry brushed it with granite gray. As a finishing touch, I will spray a clear matte finish to seal everything in. The pictures do not do the project justice. Does this project look ok to you guys or do I need to do something else with it?
Maybe some swatches of color on some pieces of scrap, since not everything would be completely covered in rust. If you Google "metal recycling yards" and look at images tab, you'll see what I mean. Some will be shiny silver, like chrome, galvanized or stainless steel, too.
I am not good at making roads so I was trying to find a simple way. I took a roofing shingle and cut it 2 3/4" wide (20 ft. in HO scale) to use as a blacktop road if I can ever get a layout going again. What do you guys think?
