River Edgeing

I have some flat travel terrain water ways I made but that looked rather akin to having put a wide blue strip on the terrain Matt. No liking this especially for my western games I looked over pictures of streams and rivers. Behold, Lots of Brush and small trees on the banks. Being that I like to mix up the edging, I made plastic strip bases of 3 to 6 inches long and 1 to 2 inches deep. The edge to be placed along the river / water way I edged in river sand I picked up from the American River near where I live. The stones are from model railroad bag of rock applied singly. The green under coat is in case the flocking is a bit thin, but as the final product is packed with plants and trees I did not spend much time painting it, though I did paint the edge of the plastic base all the way around. The Sand is affixed with Contact Cement as are the rocks, dries fast and lets me move on to the flocking which I did with white pva glue. Applied glue, put on a lot of Flocking and Pressed the flocking down with my fingers, let dry for an hour.




Brushed off Excess flocking and started Hot gluing plants and trees as pictured to the left here. The Brown scrub tree is a wire with loop for a base, contact cement, dipped into the brown chopped flock, pressed and left to dry. The green scrub tree is same process but I used a bamboo skewer from a pack from the super market usually used for Kabobs. The Flat tall grass is long grass from Woodland Scenic spread between 2 coffee sticks that are clapped with small clips, then pva glue run along both sides, left to dry. After drying you can undo the sticks, trim

along the glue edge and pull apart into smaller stands as pictured. The rest is clump foliage from woodland scenics, bits of thin branching for drift wood etc.

With the bases done small, I can scatter them on

both sides of a Stream or Creek helping to visually define the water way better and provide obscuring cover for skirmish games, or more eye catching features for larger mass scale games. Doing the same with slightly smaller bases but extending the sand around the entire edge with Brush or scrub trees in the middle can be used for marshy ground and or swamps, though

swamps I would vary the colors and have more / different types of ground cover. The smaller bases let me follow the curves of a water way, surround a pond or be scattered apart. I used white paper for this last shot and card stock water print for the river just to show how I can deploy the finished edging pieces. The final pieces do not require much space for storage, about 20 of them cover a single sheet of paper and provide plenty of possible cover or a place to just go fishing!