Making Scenery Out of Toilet Paper for Your Wargaming Table
The question is, how do you turn this:
Into this:
Cut & Glue
Start with the cardboard tube that makes the trunk of the tree. There isn’t much in the way of measurement, the tree base doesn’t require too much accuracy.
Cut the tube so that it is is about six inches long: this tree is designed to block line of sight.
Chunks are gouged from the top to add more interest to the texture of the finished product. Another option would be to glue some broken up ice cream sticks around the top to achieve the same result.
All good scenery needs a solid base and old CDs are always a good choice for scenery. They are strong and abundant!
Although you can use cardboard, I have found that it tends to warp badly when PVA glue and/or water are applied.
The tree is glued down with Superglue to make sure it bonds properly.
Toilet Paper Time!
Now the fun starts. Who doesn’t love playing with what is, effectively, paper mache?!
Apply PVA glue liberally to the inside of the tree where the bottom meets the CD and push toilet paper into the glue. In the end product, this is the base of the tree stump.
Work upwards towards the top of the tube. Liberal amounts of PVA are important to soak into the toilet paper. The PVA glue will dry hard on the toilet paper.
Once the outside has been covered in PVA and toilet paper, the whole thing can be covered in watered down PVA glue to add additional sealing to the end product.
Painting
The toilet paper will take a while to dry, but once it has, the painting begins.
Over a black undercoat that has dried properly, begin a very liberal drybrush of an appropriate colour. Some research in Google will give an idea of the sorts of colours needed.
I have been painting toy soldiers for many years and have a heap of “antique” paints in the collection. I used some very old Spearstaff Brown as the basis, and then once this had dried properly, added some Bleached Bone to the base colour and drybrushed the lighter colour over the top.
Once all this has dried, additional foliage can be added. I built a face from more toilet paper and PVA glue that was then roughly shaped to make the the facial features.
How easy is scenery?
That is a really awesome result for such a simple technique. Your color choices make it perfect for something like a forest of Nurgle too.
With a bit of organisation, you could bash out a whole forest in one sitting with some different tube sizes and enough bog roll.