Reading the Tea Leaves

As those of you who have seen my previous posts about basing and terrain know, using tea leaves can be a very interesting way to do ground cover on larger areas.

These tend to have a wider variety of shapes and sizes, even on one 'type' of loose leaf tea.

I realized that I could use this to augment the winter terrain pieces that I am making now.  I have a few articles on how I have been making these, starting with this:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/01/winter-returns.html

Once the terrain pieces have been painted, they are set up for flock, and then snow.  Here's are a few episodes on how I do the flock and snow:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/01/snow-patch.html

I try to have a number of shade and textures of flock on hand, especially when I am trying to match the game mat that I am using.  The coarse turf is great for that extra flavor of texture here and there, especially where I am trying to put the partial areas of snow.

On several of my tree stands, I have regular leaf trees, so that it is not just endless Christmas trees everywhere!  However, I had forgotten that those leaves need to go somewhere, and that I should have piles of those fallen leaves under those trees!

So, after saving several batches of Cathy's loose leaf tea (Chai and Earl Grey in this instance), I crushed those up a bit with my fingers and then piled them up under the trees.

It made a huge difference in color and texture.  It was quite fortuitous that the colors of those two tea leaves were far better than anything I could have painted.

Here you can see the difference that it makes, and how nicely it compliments the greener flock.  Oddly enough, that flock is really a brownish green, but compared to the tea leaves, it is so much greener!

That extra touch of texture is wonderful, but not so much texture that figures won't be able to stand in the forest pieces.

This tree stand shows it quite well.  Before I put on my flock, I dropped the leaves directly under the trees, scattering it a little more the farther away I got from the trunk.

With the flock placed next, this terrain piece really comes to life.

Next, I will be doing the same snow effect that I created in the previous posts.  I am hoping to do live tutorial sessions on terrain, but that will definitely require more equipment than I have available.

If you like these terrain posts, any contributions to the Pateron Page will be very helpful towards that goal!  And you will also be eligible to win the monthly raffle figure. :-)

https://www.patreon.com/JamesWappel