Transcript
You ever cruise through your local hobby or arts and crafts store and see tons of weird things you’re like, oh, I could build this thing outta that thing, or, man, those look cool, I could use them for this that and the other? I do that all the time. So the other day I was at Michael’s looking for some fake plants, cause you know, they always got those 40% off coupons, how can you let those go to waste, right? And I walked past their, I guess, decorative rocks aisle. I don’t know, had a bunch of jars of rocks and beads and I guess stuff you’d pour into a glass vase or something for display, and I saw these. Yeah, multi-colored chunks of glass that weren’t rounded off like beads or anything like that and I immediately thought they looked like crystal shards or ice and they’re the perfect size for 28mm tabletop terrain!
INTRO
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we do a crafting or painting episode the fourth Thursday of every month! So, you know, let’s head over to the old crafting table and see what we have to play with today.
So Michael’s has a variety of these glass rock chunks and I made some, what I’ll call “Crystal Scatter Terrain” a while ago, and this time when I was in there they had these brown pieces and they didn’t have those before. I thought they might be cool in a desert type of setting. I’ve never made any desert type terrain, so, hey, two birds one glass rock, right? Try new things, see what happens.
TLDR, I think the brown glass in the desert terrain actually is my favorite outta what we’re gonna make today.
Here’s another interesting note: when I saw this glass and was inspired to make some terrain, it actually inspired a whole biome in my homebrew D&D world. It probably has some official fancy fantasy name on the map – which I haven’t come up with yet – but in parenthesis on that world map, it’s gonna have the colloquial name, which is Glass Country. I know, super creative, right? But in the context of roaming around a world and someone says, oh yeah, those orcs fled into Glass Country, that’s got an intriguing ring to it. I mean, as a tourist, I’d go check out a place called Glass Country.
Of course the back story will be that Glass Country is the result of some ancient magical battle which either caused huge jagged shards of crystal to erupt from the ground or maybe mountains of crystal rained down in a cataclysmic barrage. Something like that. Anyway, so there’s huge cliffs and chunks of crystal sticking up outta the ground. Whatever, it’s cool fantasy terrain, right?
And it’ll work for skirmish games, wargames and RPGs, it’ll just be something a little unique on the table to move miniatures through.
So we’re gonna see what it’s like to work with this glass in combination with our other typical hobby terrain materials and we’re gonna encounter some problems and figure out some solutions.
The first thing you gotta do is wash this stuff, for sure. It’s all dusty and gritty and you gotta get that stuff off so they can be glued and painted or whatever. I just used a cheap strainer to hold ‘em under the sink and just gave ‘em a good stir. Work in small batches to make them easier to work with and then I just laid them all out on a beat up cookie sheet I keep around for hobby stuff.
After they’re washed I separated the chunks into various piles by size and color.
Now, before I started actually building pieces, I wanted to experiment a little bit with adhesive, i.e. how is this glass gonna get stuck to the terrain. As I mentioned, I made a batch of crystal scatter terrain pieces a while back and I learned a few things that time, the most important of which was how the glass, being transparent, allows the surface the glass is pressed against or glued to, to show through. This is a big issue because a lot of us make terrain out of insulation foam, which is typically either blue or pink. And of course I can only get the pink XPS foam. And having pink show through the glass on a piece of terrain just doesn’t work. And in, say, non-snowy or non-frozen terrain, having white show through the glass doesn’t really work either.
I did a couple tests off-camera where I just glued some pieces of glass to some pieces of foam in various ways. Obviously superglue is a non-starter cause it eats XPS foam, so the other options I tried were hot glue, gorilla glue and even straight up terrain paste. Cause that stuff typically dries pretty hard and usually locks in tiny rocks and stuff, so I thought I’d try it. I also tried spackle and ModPodge.
So the bottom line is, hot gluing the glass directly to the foam actually works the best, but it’s not infallible and it has that problem of seeing color through the glass. Gorilla glue works like a champ but that stuff foams up as it cures so it’s pretty hard to find a way to lock the chunk of glass down while the glue foams and cures. And it’s root beer colored, but it’s also semi-transparent, so you still get some color bleed through the glass.
I put some brown and black tinted modpodge onto the foam and let that dry and then I hot glued the glass to that and that seemed to work – but you’ll see later that it doesn’t work 100% of the time. But I’ll show you how to fix it. This technique, in the end, I think is the most promising, other than of course being able to just super glue the glass down to an actual surface like cork or MDF. Which that actually works great but you do have that issue with the color if you – if the cork is too light or you know the MDF is too light or not the color you want to be seen through the glass, then you have this issue of trying to cover it with another substance.
The terrain paste and spackle were complete nonsense because under the glass, the goop has no way to dry, so while it dried on the surface, under the glass the goop was still wet after like four days.
I did also try just putting brown paint down and glueing to that, and it kinda worked but in a lot of cases you don’t want to glue to a layer of paint, because then the bond is only as strong as the paint bond, not the glue bond. But sometimes it can work, I mean, painting it directly onto the foam, the foam is porous so the paint kinda goes down in there and it still leaves room for adherence … so maybe it works. I’m not sure. But, I guess that’s what you wanna tune into these videos for is to have me tell you … how to not really do something.
All right, let’s get into the builds. So first thing, gotta cut out some bases from your preferred basing material. I’m using Sentra here but of course MDF or straight foam are typical bases. I gotta whole video on why I use Sentra – Pachow! I’ve always wanted to steal that from – I mean, make an homage to Tabletop Minions and Uncle Atom. So there, I did it, and now I’ll have to come up with my own thing.
Anyway, I just cut out a bunch of random shapes, all in a basic “scatter” size, roughly three by six inches, and then beveled the edges and then gave ‘em the once over with some 320 grit sand paper.
Side note – I shot 75 minutes of footage for this cutting and sanding bit. I have got to better at this crafting video video production, cause that’s nonsense. That’s way too much footage.
Anyway, now we got some bases, we can start putting some foam down. Always try to keep in mind how miniatures will fit or stand on your terrain. I tell myself that all the time and somehow I always forget. Anyway, I just chopped some foam up, I’m using half inch XPS and I just hot glued some pieces down on various parts of the base plates and then trimmed slopes into the foam to blend it into the base perimeters.
And then of course we gotta sculpt those chunks of foam into chunks of rock. I did my typical slash and scrape with a hobby knife, did some texturing by pressing rougher pieces of that glass into the foam and rolling it around and stabbing it in here and there, and that seemed to work pretty good.
For the desert piece I cut the half inch foam down even more to make a very low rock. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention what my actual fabrication plan is. I’m going to make a piece of forest or green grassy type of terrain, a piece of desert terrain and a couple pieces of snowy terrain, which I’ve also never done, as far as terrain goes. And after this experience, I dislike miniature snow almost as much as I dislike real snow. It’s not that bad, the snow is fine but I gotta get better at making it look realistic. Cause you’ll see how basically I made what looks like frosted cakes.
Anyway, so to get a piece of this glass to look like it’s coming out of the ground, it just needs to, uh, come out of the ground. So I kinda shove a piece into the foam to make a general mark of the shape it’s gonna need and then I roughly cut a hole in the foam. I do try to make it as snug as possible, so I ere on the side of cutting out too little and then carving out little bits as I need cause you really want the glass to be flush with the foam. But that’s also virtually impossible and also not super duper important, it’s always fixable with some filler after the glass is glued in place. Just keep in mind you wanna tint whatever filler you use in case it’s not the color you want to see through the glass.
This piece is going to be forest type terrain piece and since there was a large flat open end, I figured that’s a good spot for some more cover. So I test fit a mini in the path between the rock and where I’m gonna put another piece of glass, make sure it fits, and now I know generally where to put the second piece of glass.
Now the Sentra is white, the foam is pink, so I’m mixing some brown and black paint into some modpodge and we’ll do that typical terrain sealing thing. Just paint it all over the foam and the base. Set that one aside to dry and we’ll work a bit on the desert piece.
This is all the same process, using hot glue to attach the foam to the base, slicing it down and carving it up, punching in some texture – I actually really like how this piece is turning out. Instead of the typical dark brown modpodge I figured I’d put some ochre and light brown in the modpodge for this one’s base. All right, set this one aside to dry and onto the damn snow bases.
For the first snow one I decided to have two chunks of ice sprouting from the hillside. I did all the standard texturing on the foam rock but as you’ll soon see, that was literally a waste of time, cause I just cover it all completely in snow. Well, it wasn’t a waste of time, cause that’s how you learn, right? Well, it’s how I learn anyway – by making mistakes! Anyway, if I’d taken a bit more time, I would have made use of some of this nonsense texturing that I did and had some of it show through the snow, but … anyway.
So for this one I put in some of the cheapy craft white paint and I was actually surprised at how well it covered. I thought for sure the cheap crappy craft paint would not do its job but the white seems to be one of the best colors! I am nothing if not constantly surprised.
So now for this last bit of snow terrain, I just found this one piece of glass that seemed like it would make the perfect hilltop – so I set out to sculpt a smashed cupcake looking thing. This one is truly an embarrassment but hey, just keep telling yourself “everything is a test, an experiment” and you’ll feel better. I don’t feel better cause I’m actually showing it to you, but you know, when you do something like this, you’ll feel better cause you ain’t gotta show it to nobody!
I let the modpodge dry for a day, cause you know, I’m lazy, and now it’s time to actually attach all these chunks of glass. First off, I hot glued the embedded piece of glass in the foam rock and then I hot glued the freestanding piece of glass to the flat surface. Both of these, we’ll soon see, surprised me by seeming to work great and then failing down the timeline – but I also show you how I fix ‘em. It’s a pretty easy fix. The one going on the flat surface I plan to fill in around the edges with texture and flock, et cetera.
Same concept here, I want a large chunk of crystal erupting from the desert rock and then there’s all this open space on the base. I figured there’s always rules for “rough terrain” in most games and this container of brown and white glass came with a bunch of small shards, so I thought it’d be cool to have a bunch of smaller pieces cluttering up one side of the scatter piece. Now you’ll see even more of my wasted time – I mean, experiments! – I’m putting down a mix of modpodge and beach sand with a little fine grain flock for flavor.
Look at that, alliteration even in a crafting vid!
I figure I’ll try letting the modpodge itself be the glue for these little pieces so I just stick ‘em in there and then sprinkle on a few bits of coarser debris – pay attention to my scientific technique here – and set it aside to dry.
For the foresty base – yes, foresty is a word, I just smithed it – for this one I have a pretty standard recipe of gray craft paint going over the dark modpodge and some dark green for the non-rocky areas. Again, this is mostly an undercoat to hide any off-colors under the flock and as a base for dry brushing the rock. I slap down a little bit of a lighter green where I think there’ll be like a walking path sort of thing.
I put the glass cherry on top of the stupid melty cake thing and the sand goop seems great for the snow bases as well, even though it’s not really necessary. It does allow me to blend the melted cake into the flat base though.
I hot glue the “ice” shards into the better-looking snow piece and they look pretty cool coming out of the white rock.
Time for some dry brushing on the forest stone, typical light grays and whites, and then it’s time to break out the Citadel washes. I like putting down the Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade in different places and my favorite is the Athonian Camoshade, kind of a green brown that I like the look of on rocks sometimes. I add some Seraphim Sepia in spots too, just to really make the rock colors look random.
Let’s do some tan and white dry brushing on the desert rock – man I really like how this one is turning out. I go with the same mix of washes except I stay away from the Camoshade this time.
For the snow bases I just water down some of the white craft paint and slap it on to get that kinda recessed snow sort of look. Which again, won’t matter much cause of how I flock the piece in the end. Speaking of snow flock, I’ve got these two products that I haven’t hardly ever used. This stuff from Green Stuff World is sparkly, good for like ice dusting or adding sparkle to the top of white snow. This stuff from Huge Miniatures is really interesting, it somehow exists in these actual little snowball shapes, they look really good for snow drifts I think, but they can also be easily broken down into mush.
I will say one thing though about this stuff – wear a respirator or some kind of dust mask when using it. It’s like finely ground fibre glass or something and it gets everywhere and it’s very light, so it floats in the air. I was a little horrified when I realized this, so just want to put that out there. I’d be real careful when using it.
I used some watered down PVA glue to add some darker, muddy texture to indicate a sort of worn path in the snow. Then I used more of the watery PVA glue to add the snow texture. I just kept adding that stuff and eventually I just covered the whole rock piece with it and banked it up around the glass piece on the flat end. I frosted the stupid cake, which actually made it look even more like something from Dolly Madison and I made sure to fill in the gap between the foam and the ice chunk on the top. I added more of the sparkly stuff across the snow and thought it might be cool to put some of those ice sparkles on the very top of the actual glass piece too, like frosted ice or something.
Using the watery PVA I put some green flocking on the upper surfaces of the forest rock. I do really like terrain that has rock peeking out from under grass and stuff, you know, like it’s moss, or whatever. I just like that look a lot and so I do this quite a bit on terrain pieces. I have various types and textures of flock and here I’m going to fail you as a YouTuber – I don’t know what brands or types of flock these are, cause I usually take the stuff out of it’s commercial packaging and put it in my own containers. My apologies for that. I do have the typical Woodland Scenics brand stuff, but I like some of the products I’ve gotten from a German company and some other places a lot more. I’ll try to find the names and put some links down below but I’m really sorry, no promises, cause I have to try to track them down and I don’t know if I remember – anyway, we’ll see if I can find ‘em for you guys. So, I put a mix of different flocks down, including some brown stuff for the path.
And here, where I’m about to proudly show off the piece, the glass pops right out of the foam. From looking at it, the hot glue adhered perfectly well to the modpodge and foam but cleanly separated from the glass. I have my test piece still that was glued the exact same way and it’s really locked into the foam, so all I can think of is that each piece of glass is probably different insofar as how much texture it has for the glue to bite into.
And here you can see the freestanding piece has also come loose! Dammit. But you know what you reach for when all else fails. That’s right, super glue fixes everything. I was a little concerned about using the CA glue on the foam but the foam seems to be totally sealed by the modpodge so I decided to try it. I dropped a bunch of extra thick CA glue into the hole in the foam, jammed that glass back in there and did NOT use any accelerant. I think kicker would have totally eaten into the foam through the modpodge. Now I don’t know that for sure, but I didn’t feel like risking that to save a few minutes of drying time. I also used superglue to reinforce the freestanding piece of glass and it all worked exactly like it was supposed to. I just added a few bits of foliage and flocking to cover up the seams, I think it looks great.
On the desert piece, I wanted to add some actual red sand I found in my Pile of Opportunity – Terrain edition – and I used it to blend in the edges of the desert stone. I’ve had this bag of gross-looking lichen for ages and i thought a couple bits of this would make appropriate dried up desert vegetation, but less is definitely more with this stuff for sure.
Gamer Grass make some great products I like to use, again, no sponsorships here, they don’t even know I exist – but I have some of this really tall stuff that I don’t use much on mini bases cause it’s – because it’s so tall, but this seemed like a perfect application for it, so down it goes.
Of course no terrain is complete with out some tufts from the Army Painter, right? You gotta put ‘em in there, it’s like mandatory or something.
And these Gamer Grass tufts, tall ones like the desert variety, is why I wanted to make a snow base to begin with. I’ve had these for like three years and never had a chance to use them, so here we go! They actually look pretty great on the snow base, so these are win. Hundred percent.
The forest base gets the full on tuft treatment too and I’m pretty liberal with ‘em here. I also just picked up this pack of ivy looking stuff from my local game store – Lost Planet – and I’m pretty smitten with these micro ivy leaves, I think they’re really cool. The matrix they come on, however, leaves a little to be desired. It’s basically a big rectangle of like nylon scratch pad or something. I thought it would be more easily pulled into strands, but all that said, it does look pretty decent on the base.
All right, here are the finished pieces. Overall, I’m happy with how the glass looks on each one, even the melted cake thing. The glass definitely works as ice in the snowy terrain, and even though it’s kinda weird and unique, the glass looks pretty cool in the other two types of terrain as well.
If nothing else, these would be a surprise for your skirmish game opponent or your D&D players. I dig ‘em, but you let me know what you think. And also, let me know what other weird items you’ve run across that have inspired you to incorporate into your own terrain.
And always remember, keep on steady craftin’.
Yes, that’s an homage, it ain’t theft. Or copyright infringement. Or trademark infringement. It’s just one YouTuber bowing to another. Link below if you don’t know who I’m homaging.
Make something pretty! See ya!