Nice tutorial, will refer to it when my trees are ready to go into production. Only thing I would suggest is to go to a fabric store or quilt shop and get dark quilting fiber, save a step in the process. Got a queen size batt for less than the price of 4 packs from Micro-Mark. Plenty for my needs and several friends too.
Thanks for sharing your ideas and photos.
Have fun,
Lee -- Nice tutorial! That's pretty close to what I do, although I didn't think of the black spray paint. I'll try that next time I make a bunch. I often combine stalks or add branches to get the right shape for the trees.
Looking at what your stalks look like, I guess mine is Sedum after all.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
My layout is N scale, but the sedum stalks can be cut longer to make terrific looking HO trees.
Here's my tutorial on combining stems and making decent looking trees for a very reasonable price.
Hope this is useful.
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
I looked at a bunch of pictures of sedum (stonecrop), and, although there are about a hundred species, I didn't see anything that looks exactly like what we have.
This is a rather large one: it's actual size is 7" tall x 5.5" wide, which is a pretty good size for an old-growth hardwood. I trim off most of the florets at the top using sprue nippers.
My rather lengthy post had 3 nuggets in it for the OP:
1) With work, you can make cheap commercial products look better.
2) There are lots of natural materials which make good tree armatures, and they're free if you can pick them up outside.
3) Most of the trees on your layout do NOT have to be realistic, only the ones that really show.
I think the flower mentioned in the first post is sedum. It is a little late in the year to snip it now, though it can be done, the flowers may be a bit broken up. If you can find neighbors with them, next fall you will have a great source of trees. Also, the weed goldenrod is often used, treated about the same, but it usually takes a little more trimming. There are a number of weeds and flowers that can be dried and used for trees/tree armatures, take a walk, look around, use your imagination, steeple bush/spirea is one that comes to mind. Have also seen WS polyfiber stretched over armatures, sprayed with adhesive, dusted with foliage or turf that looked good in clusters of trees.
Good luck,
Hi SD fan: I don't know if these meet your criteria, but these are what I use on my layout. Super Trees, bottle brush conifers, and puff ball trees.
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you have a lot of mutually exclusive wishes on that list.
First of all, if your price point is less than 50 cents a tree, good luck finding any commercial, ready-to-use tree that fits your budget. Even the fake-looking, low-end trees are more like $1.00 - $1.50 per tree. And these are the ones that are typically found in hobby stores, especially ones that don't specialize in model railroad supplies. You might luck into something on massive sale at your LHS or at a train show, but I wouldn't count on it.
However, all is not lost. You actually can make decent-looking trees with WS armatures, but you have to work at it. First of all, you need to spend a lot of time twisting the branches so that they're sticking out at a lot of angles (the "just twist" method in the directions doesn't yield very realistic trees). You need to paint them some color other than shiny plastic brown (all of the trees I can see from my desk are actually greenish gray). I generally paint the trees with a mixture of 4 drops light gray to 1 drop dark green, thinned 50% so that some of the underlying brown bleeds through (brush painting, which leaves streaks, is more realistic than airbrushing). Then you need to use large chunks of WS clump foliage or a similar product to make leaf clusters, then spray it with hairspray, spray adhesive, dilute glue / matte medium, and dust them with ground foam.
I actually make mine with a plant that we have growing in our garden (I have no idea what it is called, unfortunately), which is in the same family as broccoli and cauliflower. The heads of the plant (picture a stalk of broccoli, about 1/10 the size) make a perfect natural armature with a little pruning. Every fall, I go out and snip them off and dry them, then use clump foliage and ground foam as above. If you can harvest a natural product from your own property (I don't advocate culling any plant which you don't own) that has a good shape and is fairly sturdy, you're well on your way to cheap trees. Any craft store which has materials for dried floral displays will also have a variety of products that make good armatures, for a lot less than WS armatures.
Another solution is the "puffball" forest. Only the trees standing by themselves need to be accurately modeled. For any large area of trees standing together, only the ones on the edge need to be modeled. For the interiors, I use the bamboo skewers that cost about $5 for a bag of 50 at the supermarket, cut into shorter lengths. I cover (as in lay on top of) these with green polyfiber (available cheaply at craft stores, or you can buy the white stuff and paint it yourself, then sprinkle it with clump foliage and ground foam. Very convincing, and not expensive (maybe $5 to cover about 2 square feet, depending on how thickly you use the foliage and foam).
The bottom line is, if you have the budget and want to save time, then splurge on some high-end pre-made trees, especially for those special ones that occupy the vignettes on your layout. For the rest, especially where you need a lot together, experiment with natural materials and "puffball" canopies until you get it right. You'll be surprised at what you can achieve with a little practice. Good luck.
I would like to have a nice looing forest. But i am sickend by the prices for good trees.
This is what i am looking for
If anybody has any tips that would be great.