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Bushes
Next up are bushes. I use these around the trees, at edges of sceneryandnearbuildingstoaddamiddleheightlayer. Itend to go simple with bushes and use either rubberised horse hair or poly fibre as a base. I tear these into bush shapes. I use the spray adhesive followed by the Woodland Scenics' fine turf or Noch leaves to add foliage. I can create hundreds really quickly!
Grass
Nothing beats static grass to represent grass. It is short fibres that stand upright in just the way that real grass does. The danger is that if you just put static grass down on a plain board, it has no texture and looks like a bowling green. That is obviously not ideal in most cases so it can be worth gluing on a few bits of small talus or something similar if you have a completely flat surface.
I generally start with a short base layer of grass. This is best at about 2mm in HO and O scale as this grass covers the ground
and gives density. I choose a brighter colour as grass is normally greenest at the base.
Applying the grass needs a static charge. You can use a puffer bottle (I certainly have) but the grass does not stand as upright. A static grass applicator gives better results but is pricier. You can make your own but that's a whole new hobby – building tools!
There are specialist glues you can use for static grass made by the grass manufacturers. I have used thin white glue but apparently this skins more quickly. Generally, I try and glue small patches at a time to avoid this.
Either remove your trees and bushes or mask them off using newspaper to avoid them becoming covered in grass. Fill up your grass applicator, brush a thin layer of the glue on to the ground, turn on the applicator, attach the grounding lead somewhere near the glue and sprinkle the grass on. You can hoover the spare grass up at this stage whilst the glue is still wet and the suction of the hoover will pull the grass more upright.
I use tights material over the end of my hoover and I do have a dedicated small grass-only hoover. Both methods allow you to recover your grass to reuse again.
Next up you need to add the main grass layer. This is the colour you want to be most obvious when you look at the area. Later summer grass will be more straw coloured and there are some great brands out there, such as WWS (supplied through Peco as well) or Noch, who mark their grass by the season it is supposed to represent.
I find it best to use the WWS layering spray at this point as a glue. I have tried other spray glues (they leave little balls) or brushing on a white glue (you need to wait for it to be set
16 ROUNDHOUSE - October 2018