Hello All, first time poster, thanks for all the great advice. I built the scenery (foam risers, etc.), then painted with earth laytex, but let the paint dry.
To move to the next step, I then sprayed scenic glue and sprinkled on some blended grass. So far so good, I like the results. The directions said to spray some more on to fix the grass...well, I got polka-dotted grass, everywhere. Not necessarily a bad look, just not one I was going for! After more blended grass, I gave up on trying to spray on the glue and used a contact lens bottle (got that tip from a Kalmbach book - thanks!) to hold the grass down and things worked better, but not great, the drops still at times pulled the grass off.
Where have I gone wrong? Since this is my first "real" layout since my childhood, I'm learning all over, sorry for the very basic question. I did manage to fight through it, put on some additional heavy grasses, bushes and it looks now very good to me, although probably a 1 on the scale of 10 for most of you. Thanks in advance for the help, you've already helped a ton!
What I do is paint on a layer of the base paint then sift the scenic material on top of the wet paint. I let that dry. Then I take a spray bottle that will deliver a fine mist of water and put a mix of water and a couple drops of liquid diswashing detergent (makes the water "wetter"). I then have a "ketchup" bottle, one of those plastic bottles with the long nozzle lid used for ketchup and mustard, filled with 50-50 mix of water and white glue..
Once the original paint layer has dried I add any additional layers of scenery material. I then mist the area with the wet water, letting a fine spray drift down on the area. If you blast the area with a coarse spray you will get the material blowing away or the material forming little clumps. After the scenery is damp, I use the ketchup bottle to dribble glue onto the scenery. You want enough that you can see the glue on the material, but not enough to wash away the material. Let that dry some. Before it completely dries, hit it with another layer of the glue mixture and let it dry completely. You can then repeat the process to build up lyers or add other material.
I used this process ob several layout and modules. My module was carried in the back of an open pickup at Interstate speeds wihout any of the scenery blowing off.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Thank you both, these are both great suggestions. I'm still building my layout scenery but as you saw, my first brush with the grass didn't turn out so well. This will really help. I have both, unfinished portions where I can paint directly on then put grass on that as well as painted sections already - I hadn't thought about the solid white glue.
Thank you both, I hope I'll be able to post a pic here tonight of my progress. Since I don't have much room, it's a 4X6 "Micro" layout in HO scale. A double loop with actually three spurs, I'll let you know. Thanks again!