Grim’s Modelling Tips: Fake Grass Freebies!

So, I have found something out completely by accident that is excellent for us scratch builders & wargamers, yet the best thing is, it wont cost you a penny!

A while ago, my missus and I were talking about turfing a few patches of bare earth in our garden and discussing options. Rather than shelling out for real grass turf, we thought we’d explore the artificial astroturf route, being that our kids are kinda destructive at the best of times and that real grass would take a real beating with their antics. I decided to get some prices & info about it, and discovered that most suppliers of the stuff, actually are willing to send out small samples of the various grades and styles of it.

This lead me on to thinking, just maybe this stuff might be useful as a potential free modelling material. Soon enough I was using my Google-fu to track down any places I could snag plenty of the sample freebies for my, Ahem’ “garden design research” (Which is what I told the wife!!) knowing full well that when she’d had a good look at all the info etc, all the left over samples of the stuff would be mine to butcher and create some new wargaming scenery!

Sure enough, within a week I was inundated with a variety of sizes and styles of the wonder turf, to be honest I hadn’t expected just the volume of what I had managed to blag in the way of sample bits (There are lots)

Ok this pic is just a few pieces that I have now, as you can see there’s a 15mm Pliim adventurer for scale of the bits. They do come in a lot of different sized samples, from A4 page sized, to smaller squares, rectangles and circles. At this moment of writing I have two full to bursting large plastic carrier bags, stuffed full with every style and thickness of artificial turf! Not bad for nothing, delivered free to your door!!

Now not that I’m going to encourage you lot to start blagging every available fake grass supplier in your nation (Even so, if you really wanted, I couldn’t stop you….!) but these are great materials with plenty of terrain making potential. To further just how good these could be for wargaming, I even spotted a trader at the recent Sheffield Triples 2013, selling offcut bits of these to use as fields and crops !

You can see from the close up, the length of the fibres for each type would suit many different options, from the short cheap stuff (Ideal for just grassed areas) to the longer more expensive “realistic” types being suited for things like long grassy unkempt fields, jungle undergrowth, and even cut into strips, stuck on bases with added flock/scatter to create quick and easy bushes and hedging!  Even cut into little bits to add tufts and scrub to other stuff, the things you can create from this with a bit of imagination are myriad!!

As you can see from these pics, you don’t even need to do anything to it to make use of it (Although I would recommend adding stuff like bases, flock and bits to really make it come to life a tad more) I’m sure that you could really go to town with this stuff and create some pretty impressive bits with very little effort. It can even take some haircutting to trim if it’s too long, or you need some barer bits etc.

So those in the UK will be easily satisfied with a quick google search for free samples, and those in the rest of the world will need to find suppliers where they are and enquire for free samples from their end. You could even try DIY/hardware/Garden centres and just ask for some offcut samples (although you’ll need to blag a bit, so don’t tell them you want to use it for wargame modelling materials! Tell em’ you can’t decide what kind you need for your lawn or something! You know, make it up!!)

Anyway, if I have inspired any of you to create something using the info, please let me know, show me some pics and i’ll post them up here (and I’ll show you my efforts too, that is, when I get around to it, busy, busy, busy….!)

Peace out Freebie hunters….

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