This project is from before 2012
Making scenery from artificial flowers, dried flowers and hair braids.
In this article I show how artificial flowers, dried flowers and hair braids can be used as materials to make scenery on the model layout, like trees, bushes and hay. To create a forest you will need lots, lots of trees, and they are expensive when purchased “already made” or even in kits. Leave the expensive ones for in the front of the forest, here I show you my way of creating trees for filling in large forest space, after all they are less visible than the frontline.
Trees can be made from plastic artificial flowers. All you have to do is to cut to length and remove the plastic shine with some flat paint. Add some turf and you just about have yourself a tree.
The trunk, if wanted, can be made with mechanics wire and clay, or other materials.
Dried flowers can be used for flowers themselves, depending on the size, and also be glued in bushes made from lijchen. Of course, a small amount of paint will bring a variety of colorful flowers.
Field grass can be cheaply made out of hair braids. A fistful for just a Dollar. (2012-dollar value)
1 - Making trees with artificial flowers.
Three different artificial flowers, or whatever you like to name them. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in flowers and their names. I just walk in the store and look for something that I think will match or looks like what can become a model tree.
I describe them here as flower 1,2 and 3. (unless someone can email me the correct flower names)
First, I cut the stems to length and, if needed, in shape with a side cutter. There is a metal wire inside the plastic stem to give it strength and allows for bending into shape. On average I was able to cut 6 trees out of one plastic flower.
Some photos of the process.
I removed the shine and light color.
2 - Making model flowers with real dried flowers.
Dried flowers can be used for flowers themselves, depending on the size, and also be glued in bushes made from lijchen. Of course, a small amount of paint will bring a variety of colorful flowers.
- Dried flowers which are going to be used to make flowers on the layout. These are the smallest flowers I have found so far.
- How it looks in close-up. I am using the white flowers at the ends of the stems, and later I try to make trees from the left-over stems.
- The flowers on the layout, just to see how it looks. Still in the original white color, but that can be changed with a bit of paint.
3 - Hair braids used in scenery.
Shopping with my daughters in a beauty store brought me to this idea. For just a few dollars you can by a pack of hair braids that can be easily used as field grass or other scenery. Just cut in small lengths and glue where wanted on the layout. They sell this in many different colors, even in green.
A very small package of this from Woodland Scenics will cost over 3 Dollar (2012-dollar value), but with these hair braids you have 100 times as much.
