I wanted to make some hedges for the NOVA terrain out of pluck foam. I don't know why I chose to use pluck foam, but I was set in my mind of doing it that way. Many people choose to use foam, balsa, or even Scotch-Bright (as suggested by one local friend!), but I wanted to make use the pluck foam scraps. So here is what I came up with. They are a little on the short side for my tastes, but they were very easy to crank out. I did them in batches of 10ish, and they take about 20 minutes of effort divided over four, separated 5 minute chunks throughout the day (to allow for drying time). Best of all, they were made with stuff I had lying around from other hobby projects, and only required the donation of pluck foam scraps from a friend. (I despise pluck foam myself, and avoid it all costs)
Here is the finished product with some tanks
Here with some FoW infantry figures (Note that they are on the Litko bases, so it does add a good amount of height)
And just for scale, heres a 28mm figure
Step by Step on how I made them
Pluck foam scraps, popscicle sticks, and trusty Aleene's Tacky Glue.
Pluck foam fragments glued to popscicle stick. 2.5 fragments per stick. Let dry for a couple hours here.
Spray paint green. This is mostly for the popscicle stick base, but some of the foam will show through the flock, so good to have that green too. Let dry for a couple hours here.
For the next step, I have some mixed fine turf flock and a bottle of scenic glue from Woodland Scenics. I really like this glue for gluing flock - the consistency is, in my opinion, different than normal PVA.
Apply a thin coat of glue to the foam. Try not to let it build up anywhere - a very thin coat will suffice.
Pour flock generously over the hedge. Apply pressure to push it down into the glue. Let dry for a couple hours here.
More Woodland Scenics plugs. Scenic Cement is just super watered down PVA glue. I'm too lazy to water down and store, so I buy this. It might be different than doing it myself, it might not. I'm lazy.
Liberally soak the flock in the Scenic Cement. I use a brush for this. This step is VERY messy if you go quickly. Let dry for several hours afterwards.
The final step is to spray the whole thing with a matte varnish. This is the finally protecting coat.
I'm sure if you just wanted to make the terrain for yourself, and it wouldn't be taking a beating, you could skip the whole messy Scenic Cement phase and go straight from flock-gluing to varnish. The Scenic Cement just gives it that extra durability I want, as these hedges will be seeing the road for tournament terrain and FLGS use.
