Poly Fiber Trees

[Anonymous]

Having the need for lots of background trees I'm going to use puffs of poly
fiber and not wanting to buy bags upon bags of puny sized Woodland Scenics
material I went to Wally-Mart and bought a big bag of the stuff. Now here is where I need your help or ideas, I made a test puff (don't you just love that word?) and air brushed it with thined Poly Scale paint but when it dried the poly fiber (puff) was rather stiff almost like fine steel wool and hard to form. What do you all use for coloring this material??????? I look forward to your input. Thanks.
Harv

[nbrodar]

Cheap green spray paint. Works OK as an adhesive too.

Nick

[jeffrey-wimberly]

QUOTE: Cheap green spray paint. Works OK as an adhesive too.

[#ditto]
.96 cent Wal-mart special

[ARTHILL]

Cheapest spray cans. 4 colors of green and 2 of yellow. All the bight colors for a fall scene. What I have learned is to make the puffs very thin and flimsy and spray very little paint from a far distance( 24-36 inches). I put the darkest color on first and then mist a couple of other colors trying to do no two alike.

[Anonymous]

I've spray painted the puff balls flat black and sprinkled with coarse turf while the paint was still wet . They turned out very good.

[simon1966]

I make my balls, then soak them in either a dilute white glue mixture or matte medium solution. Now I have used green polyfiber in the past, but I don't see why you could not color the solution with a tempura paint or bottle of cheap green acrylic. Then remove the soaked balls. Squeeze out the excess and shake them in bags of ground foam. This worked well for me and I see no reason why color could not be added to the mix.

[Grubby]

I spray whole sheets of wadding that I have seperated into thin layers with Artist Acrylics (Hunter Green), tear into squares, roll into balls and stick to the layout with white glue. Then I spray with matte medium and sprinkle ground foam from above and "place" from the front to cover the gap... looks a lot less individual trees and more like a canopy as the foam fills in some of the definition.

[pike-62]

I spray my puff ball trees with the cheapest flat black spray paint I can find. I tried the green colors but liked the shaddowy look of the black under the ground foam. Another thing that I do is to cut them in half before I glue them down.
You ccan see how I do mine here.
http://www.dansresincasting.com/Puffball%20trees.htm
This is not the gospel on how to do this, only the way I do it.

Dan Pikulski
www.DansResinCasting.com

[Anonymous]

Rit fabric dye will also work. I use charcoal or black to simulate tree branches and brush stems from light gray to dark gray. Although some shrubs may have dark red stems.

[Anonymous]

I have used Rit dye with pretty good success also. Dark green seemed to work okay for inner material.

[ClinchValleySD40]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mpleasant

I've spray painted the puff balls flat black and sprinkled with coarse turf while the paint was still wet . They turned out very good.

By far the best method. And use black instead of green. Look at trees, the unerlying color you see is not green. Black will give a more realistic look.

[rayw46]

Cheap green spray paint is what I have used, then I sprinkled it with green ground foam. I think I'll try the black spray paint; it sounds like a good idea.