Scouring Pad Conifer Trees.

Whilst perusing the projects of TerraGenesis, my favorite terrain site, I came across a project where the artist had made some nice looking conifers using scouring pads and bamboo skewers. They looked pretty good but I didn't like the fact that all the trees were so straight up and down. Later while thinking about the project I decided that the trunks would look much nicer if they were made from whittled down twigs. This way the trees would have odd twist and bends in the trunks and not be so uniformly straight. I sat on the idea for a while then I decided to work on it during my move time because it wasn't a big material intensive project. Most of my materials are packed and already at my other house but I still had enough stuff to work on these at night.

Here are the twigs whittled down and stained with some very warm brown paint. I made 20 trunks but then decided to work on them 10 at a time.

I then created the foliage just as the article instructs by cutting disk of scouring pads then splitting them in half and roughing them up into irregular shapes. A couple tips: Use old scissors. The pads are impregnated with abrasives which will wreck a good pair of scissors. That leads to tip number two. Wear a mask or respirator. Tearing the pads apart releases a lot of abrasive dust. I woke up this morning with a sore throat because I didn't bother. The abrasives can be quite bad for you and you might consider doing this projects outside because the dust can linger in the air.
Here is my first finished tree. Another thing I did differently than the article was that I used Aleene's Tacky Glue instead of super glue to glue my foliage in place. Aleene's is my favorite glue for terrain. It sets more quickly than white glue but also dries clear and flexible and it's thick enough to stay where you put it unless you really glop it on which can also be useful in some situations. You can see that some of the glue hasn't quite set in this pic especially at the top but it does dry completely clear.

Here's my first group of ten trees. You can see here how the irregular stick shape adds character to each tree and makes them look more natural. Now I just need to drybrush the foliage with some lighter green and base them and I'll have a nice small wooded area.