Battlegames issue 17 - Diane's article

"Diane Sutherland gives us "Have you seen my Neil Diamond CD?", another witty offering, this time with a recycling bent to create jungle scenery on old CDs."

A selection of plastic aquatic plants and plant mats.  Most are sold on a large sprue but can be pulled off making the construction of the terrain much easier.  None of the plant mats in this picture cost more than £7 each for 100 plants.

Our venerable hot glue gun, along with a pair of scissors (to snip the plant mat sprues), a craft knife to score the CDs and a plundered selection of ISP installation CDs.

Games Workshop’s original jungle plants, now out of production, but still in wide circulation on the second hand market.  These are the green and brown ones, they have simply been washed in soapy water (a hangover chore from painting plastic figures and not strictly necessary), then washed with slightly watered down Renaissance Inks.  You could also wash with watered down dark green paint or simply dry brush.  It’s much easier to do this with the plant parts still on the sprues.

Four finished jungle terrain pieces.  The paint and sand mix has been added, then dry brushed and some static grass stuck in place with white wood glue. You can get considerable variation with just a handful of different plant types and different “planting” schemes.

 Some CDs with a selection of plastic plants fixed in place with a hot glue gun.  You can see the square of card over the centre and the sprues of the plant mats.  Scoring the CDs is just a minor precaution to help give the glue and the paint a key.

Bamboo plants, these are based differently, just on a square of 2mm MDF.  We bought a “chain” of bamboo from a home decor store which provided us with 150 individual bamboo shoots.  Three or four have been hot glued to the centre of the MDF.

Twig and plant mat trees.  Each of the plastic plants has literally been pushed onto the “branches” of the twigs.  Each twig has between three and five of the plastic plants. For solidity, the twig has been hot glued to an old coin.

Seed pods with a plastic plant mat plant stuck to the top to make palm trees.  The natural shape of the seed pod was ideal for the trunk.  These add a bit of extra colour to the Indian village featured in issue 14 of Battlegames.