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The green, green grass of home

Barry Ten

Entry posted by Barry Ten

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I love hanging basket liner - it's the best thing ever. While I accept that it is best viewed as a basis for further texturing, rather than an end in its own right, its sufficiently grassy looking, in its natural state, to fool my eye into thinking that some definite progress is being made. Rather than endless hours faffing around with glue, paint and Kermit-coloured scatter materials, you can cover dozens of square inches of model landscape in seconds, giving that instant gratification of seeing scenery begin to come alive. I had not used it before working on the S&D layout, but once I started, I become so sold on its merits that I made sure I bought enough of the stuff to see me through to the end - even if my local garden center should suddenly stop stocking it.

 

I paint the underlying plaster with burnt sienna, so there are no white patches likely to show through, and once that's dry - a few hours - I then apply PVA or Copydex and press chunks of HBL into place. In case you have not used this stuff, it is very forgiving, being sufficiently stretchy and compressible that you don't need to fit shapes together with tremendous precision. And once two pieces are fixed down adjacent to each other, they can be blended together by coaxing the fibres from one to spread across to the other and vice versa. Later, after applying scatter materials, static grass, etc, you won't be able to see the join.

 

It even works pretty well between two scenic modules. In the lower picture, below the 4F, you can make out the right angle join where the removable module sits in its gap. But it's far from obvious in the flesh and again will not really be that apparent once additional texturing has taken place.

 

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Cheers again...

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Dukedog

Have to agree about the HBL, best thing since sliced bread!

I have tried to get "some off the roll" but can't find a garden centre locally that sells it like that, so, I end up by buying individual liners and cutting up that.

 

Another thing I have done is to leave it outside in all weathers to "bleach" it out a bit, it tones the green down and also gives you patches of straw coloured HBL which looks like late summer grass.

 

Nice work on the layout BTW, looks to be coming along nicely.

 

Cheers

Frank

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marc smith

Have you tried static grass yet Al?

Just wondering how it compares with HBL....

 

I know Chris Nevard "updated" his older layouts a while back,

using static grass, to replace older HBL

 

I would guess that HBL is quicker to apply?

 

Again though, as you say it is a basis and not the completed article

and I always like to add and blend textures and tones,

so I would probably favour using both together

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  • RMweb Gold
Barry Ten
  • RMweb Gold

I do HBL as a quick fix but I would never leave it as just HBL, it's just good to get some green down quickly. I've added static and extra textures as seen in the later pics, but again it's a work in progress.

 

I'm currently working on the "up" platform now.

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