HowTo: Building a swamp

Creating a swamp for your gaming table

In this small tutorial I want to show a short howto for building a swamp for your gaming table. Most of the stuff needed must not be bought every painter or terrain crafter should have the things at home.

Needed material:

• old and/or broken CD
• old newspaper
• modelling putty like Fimo, Greenstuff etc.
• dry plant parts
• sand
• white glue
• UHU (transparent glue)
• paint

Some of the needed material

Step 1 - preparing the CD

The one thing that is not quite right with using a CD as base is the hole in the middle. Therefore the first step is to close the whole with some kind of papier-mâché. Just use some thinned white glue, stick the paper on it and use white glue again until the hole is closed. Then wait until everything is completly dry.

The closed hole and a clump of Fimo

Step 2 - modelling the height of the swamp:

To achieve some kind of 3d effect we have to build up some height for our terrain piece (we can't go down so we must go up :) ). In my example I use airdrying Fimo but greenstuff or the like will work also.

Here you can be really creative. Fimo is very easy to work with, with some water you get a kind of milk which you can smear on the bottom of the whole base. This helps your paint to stick better. If you have some small cracks or minor notches in your Fimo don't worry, the base will be sanded if everything is dry. So just wait and drink some tea, coffee whatever you like...

Base ready to sand and paint

Step 3 - Sand, paint and the like

This step should be known wo anyone who based a miniature or a terrain piece. Use your white glue as a base for the sand and pour it on. If everything is completly dry you can start to paint the piece. I chose a reddish brown for the earth parts and a green for the water parts. Then drybrush everything until you are satisfied with the result.

Sanded and painted. Ready for the vegetation

Step 4 - Gras, plants and stuff

After the basic terrain is finished, is startet to decorate the piece with som plants. For this I searched some small, dried twigs and basecoated them black. Then I drybrushed them with gray. After that just glue them on the base where they seem to fit and use some static gras to further decorate the base.In this step I was lucky that one of our fern lost some leaves which i glued to the parts where later on the water will flow.

Nearly done, just needs the water effect

Step 5 - Water/Slime/whatever

Since I do not own some great water effects like the products from Noch, I thought: "Hey just try UHU (transparent glue) and look what happens". This lead to me pouring UHU to the base. You have to be very careful and pour very slowly. If not it is very likely that bubbles will appear in your "water". I think this is very similiar to normal water effects. And as usual: Waiting waiting until everything is dry.

Ready for gaming

Conclusion

I am very happy with the overall result. For using the stuff I had at hand i am really pleased with the finished piece and it fits nicely to my gaming table.


Hope this was interesting for you to read and it inspires you to make your own swamp. If so, please leave me a comment and/or a link to YOUR swamp.

So long,
Paradox0n