Just this evening I finished some pieces that I’ve been envisioning for a while. About a month back, my sister in law brought over some decorative sea glass that she bought at a local chain arts and crafts store, Michael’s. It came in a couple colors, and I immediately tried to lay claim and lewt it for my hobby. But her and my wife had some project in mind, and I was not allowed to take it. A bag looks like this:
Decorative Sea Glass in it's native state.
I later bought a bag of my own, with the intention of making some kind of giant crystal growth area cover things. The bag cost less that $3, and is plenty for maybe 8-10 of this pieces that I made. While I was at Michael’s, I found some 4″ thin wooden disks that I’m using as the bases for this terrain. Larger might have been better, but I think they turned out fine. Here’s the finished product:
I think they turned out pretty nicely. I still need to hit them with dullcoat, and prolly ‘ard coat a couple of areas to bring out the crystalness of the crystal, but I think they’ll look good on the game board.
I learned a couple things while working on this project. Firstly, I know that I couldn’t glue the glass to the wooden base directly, as it was smooth wood. I’d need some substrate to prop it up, so I mixed some off my basing sand with white glue, and smeared that onto the bases, in order to coat them, and plant the glass into. This didn’t work out so well. The sand wasn’t deep enough to properly seat the glass, and the smeared on sand lost the natural look that you get when you sprinkle it onto the glue. Next time I do something like this, instead of the mix and smear approach, I’ll get some air dry clay (that I’ve used successfully in the past) and use that to first set the stones, and create any kind of terrain contours, and then use the standard white glue + coat in sand approach to apply the texture.
This was my first attempt at any kind of object sourced lighting. It’s really a very basic usage, but I think it really makes the piece look cool. After the initial glue+sand+glass dried, I washed it heavily with a mixture of black tempra paint, white glue and water to make a thick wash. I was careful to only get a little on the glass itself. After that dried over night, I first drybrushed the sand sections with Reaper Muddy brown. then Vallejo Yellowish Rust, and finally a bit of Reaper Worn Olive in a few areas.
Next I moved on to the areas closest to the glass itself. First I heavily drybrushed Reaper Deep Amethyst, then a 50/50 mix of that and Reaper True Blue, then a tiny bit of plain True Blue. Finally, I got a bit of an off white, and roughly hit the edges of the glass, and added a very slight amount to the bases themselves.
I’m happy with the overall effect, and thing I’ll be very happy to have these pieces on the field.