"One that looks nice...and is not too expensive."

A few weeks ago, maybe it was longer, there was a posting on the message board of TMP (not to be confused with TMZ) about making micro-scale bamboo forests. How to make them are are at the TwoThreeSixMM blog. The motive behind them was to have a really dense stand that was hard for troops to get through. They are quick and easy and come out looking really nice. Being that my micro armor campaign takes place in a tropic/semi-tropic setting, these would be good to have on the battlefields. My own version uses small nails, which may be too thick, but still look pretty good:

1" Nails embedded in thick cardboard

I first snipped off the bottoms of the nails with a heavy-duty pair of pliers. I drilled some small holes into thick cardboard and then glued them on with super glue. I varied the dimensions of the cardboard.

Nails and base after painting

I then painted them a light brown. Yeah, bamboo is supposed to be green when alive, but this seems to look better. Once dry, I then flocked. The first one, I actually made each tree individually and then glued them on, one at a time (Old World craftsmanship), but that took forever, plus I couldn't really tell one from another in terms of foliage. So, for the next one, I just poured on the superglue over the tops of the nails and dunked the whole thing in to the flocking material.

Here is the finished product:

Forest after flocking

I also used pins with the big plastic heads on them. Here is the result of that method:

In a lot of ways, the pin-trees look better than the nail-trees, but it was faster to make the nail trees. I might do some more pin-trees. I'll use both....two different species of bamboo. They still need to have some sort of ground cover, but they are fine for now.