Friday 17 July 2009

Door mat




I found a coconut door mat for about £5 in wilkinsons (uk cheap hardwear store) recently, very plain, no patterns or colour on it. With a black flexible rubber backing in which the coconut fibbers are inserted in clumps. I had been looking for a mat like this for some time. Having seen some great pictures of wheat fields in Wargames Illustrated.

The top picture shows the backing of the mat, after some experimentation I found that you could pull clumps of fibber out of the backing material. The second picture shows some wheat fields on 3x3 and 3x6 inch art board bases with some metal wheat sheaves bought in the mid 1980's.

I am also producing some small terrain elements on 1p and 2p coins using the fibbers left in the backing with the ground level built up with filler then PVA and sand. I've also used granite chippings, picked up from the road. Click on the pictures for bigger versions.

4 comments:

Eli Arndt said...

Another excellent terrain idea. I've done something similar to the lower pick using fish tank breeder grass.

A little drybrush at the tips of the plastic chutes and some texturing at the base and you end up with a good stand in for reeds, saw grass or elephant grass.

-Eli

Andyroo said...

Thats I very neat find and great execution of a core feature - mind if I steal it?

Can I ask how tall are the clumps? From the picture it looks more 15mm than 28?

Andrew

J Womack, Esq. said...

I actually bought a few clumps of this material at Historicon the other day. I can never find a plain one of these mats - they always have some logo or pattern on them when I find them.

Nice fields. Good hunting!

-J

airhead said...

Hi Chaps, thanks for the comments. Eli, good idea with the fish tank stuff, its on my boot sale list of things to look out fore. To answre your question about the tin corrugated roofs, I use corrugated card, by G F Smith (uk paper merchant) the range is called "colour flute"

ADB, Fell free to steal all you want, size of the clumps about 15mm from the base of the coint to the top of the grass. I'll post a quick picture with some figures in.

J, hope you had a good time at Historicon.

All the best

Airhead