Cheap DIY Scenery Foam for Model Trees and Bushes!

Before painting the wire trunks I would suggest using air dry clay to cover all the exposed wire. After that dries, use a small wire brush to lightly, very lightly scribe 'bark' lines into the clay. Then paint and continue as with the video

Awesome! I read a piece in MR a bazillion years ago that talked about making a heavily wooded area by just putting the foam directly on the ground instead of making individual trees. That technique worked especially well on a hillside where trunks wouldn't easily discerned by the viewer. Thanks for the great tip, Jimmy!

Seen ya cut the wire&thought"thats alittle short?"forgot your Nscale lol would make good ground cover.

Interesting video. I've seen DIY flowers made with static grass and brightly-colored scenic foams such as yellow, red, purple, white, orange. Seems to me that your blender technique can be used also to make the foam for flowers if the foam is ground well enough.

ThreeBond 1521 Synthetic rubber adhesive. works better on every foam i have tried from hard foam to soft foam. i made some trees and flocked them with some homemade foam flock. only glue that would actually hold the foam on to the tree forever and never shake off was this . best glue i have ever seen and very very thick & sticky.

Hello Jimmy, very nice video. There is also a dry method for "crumbling" the foam. I use a manual meat grinder to grind up the foam. For a very fine foam I send it trough the grinder 2 or three times. Coloring can not be done dry, unless you airbrush once scenery is in place. Regards Henry van Wyk, South Africa

I got a Ninja express chop from Walmart for $20. It has a blade that sits lower and one higher and it works great. I first grabbed a few big sponges like this 🧽, one from the auto section and one from the cleaning section. The sponges were nice and big and they seemed to be perfect at first, but it turns out that they had something in them that sparked a little, so it's not really working out. I will now buy some basic sponges like in this video, but I will be sure to watch out for the sparkling sponge. I used t-shirt dye for dye to stain them, but I want to try using the paint. The dye wasn't the best, and I'm wondering if I used paint for the color, maybe it'll hide the sparkles.

As the saying goes, "There's more than one way to skin a cat". Us out here on the West Coast have the luxury (if you want to call it that) of having "Sagebrush". Also for glue, Cheap Dollar store "Hairspray" for glue.

Have a quick question: What if you didn't add any paint? Is the sponge coloring not sufficient or did you just want a different green color? Ready to try several colored sponges to make green tree and colored flower foams ... but wondering if I need to get some paints.

I was watching a video of a British modeler using a green pot scrubber (like scotchbrite) and cutting it to make hedgerows.

Have you or has anyone used Spanish Moss from like Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Joanns, etc to put on trees to make them look like a Cypress Tree in Louisiana type look? Just wonder - I thin I'm going to try it using this video's base

What exact wire did you use? If you don't mind, would you maybe send me a link to buy that exact wire from Amazon? Please and thank you!

so...the first thing u do...is purchase a blender?? Im thinking the premade trees would be easier and cheaper

Sure but can you still wash dishes with your trees? Awesome method and thanks for sharing Jimmy. I'm using this one for sure!

My layout could use a refresh on the trees. I used natural materials back then and all but falling apart. This seems to be a good cheap idea. I like it I'm going to put this on my list of things to do.

My buddy and I used a blender to mix our Hydrocal plaster for the scenery base and for rock molds. Using a blender gave us more working time with the Hydrocal as is sets up super fast.

If you paint the trunk with caulk before the color you can get a smoother but still rough texture and cover the twisted look.

I think I will just buy the scenic foam. I can save the blender. Thanks for the tip.

Hi. In a grinder, did you put some water with sponge before grinding coz mixer would burn up if dry?

''You're not using the blender for that!'' I wonder how many arguments have started because of this video hahahaha.