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| Swedish field gun and crew... not a common sight! |
OK so perhaps I have taken this too far but I really enjoyed making snow for the 'Lund' period bases in the Scanian War project. For those non British-Scots (I think that's what we are now or is is Scoto- Brits?) the title of this post is a little play on Glaswegian.. SNO' FAIR is a version of
it's no' fair or
it isnae fair meaning of course
... it is not fair! Yes I know, tortuous but you should try living with us!
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| mixing this with baking soda.....hmmmmm |
Actually I found playing around with glue and baking soda a lot of fun. A little messy, slightly against the rules (I was using the Boss's cooking supplies) and ultimately very productive.
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| this white powder is for nothing more sinister than baking and modelling snow! |
I cannot claim the idea for my own but I can I think lay claim to adding something to the process. I was originally inspired by Soren Christiansen's ' touch of frost' on his Swedish Life Guard cavalry for Lund.
I had made snow bases before but wanted to try something new so googled 'making snow terrain' or similar. I came across a tutorial which was only partly illustrated which mentioned PVA and baking soda. It as not specific about process, proportions or other key details but it was enough for a chap like me to start 'dicking about' as my wife so eloquently describes some of my terrain making activities.
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| Bohuslan Dragoons with the 'ice' effect below the snow |
Armed only with a tin of baking soda, a pot of PVA and a spoon it felt a little like some kind of drug cooking! Firstly I found that the proportions were producing a sort of concrete. This was too gloopy and difficult to manage. I then over-glued it to the extent that it just looked like PVA. This went on sort of greyish and I found that on solidifying, if you drybrushed it the effect was like fresh snow over hard packed ice. Quite a pleasing effect.
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| gruesome and gratuitous but very effective on the tabletop |
My next attempts were based around dolopping on this gloopy stuff( a little runnier) and then sprinkling on from the flat edge of a square toed spoon, layers of dry baking powder which went on is 'drifts' and became wet by the already gloopy mixture applied to the bases. The effect when dry pleased me mightily!
I was tempted to use the effect on every base for every unit but have been dissuaded as it restricts the use of the models to winter terrain only and that.... SNO' FAIR!
