Quick Hills

In preparation for Oh-Con this year I offered to make up 50+ hills for the event.  As a challenge I gave myself 1 weekend to complete the task.  Here is the step by step process I used.


On the Thursday before the weekend I collected all my materials.

The list included:

• 3/4" Foam
• 2" Foam
• Liquid Nails (to bond layers of foam together)
• Brown Craft Paint
• Golden Brown Craft Paint
• 150 grit Sandpaper
• Flock
• 2mm Static Grass
• PVA Glue

 I drew the hills on the foam.  I mostly went with roughly kidney shaped hills 3" x 6".

I cut out the hits with a cordless jig saw.  You could also just use a hobby knife, but I took every option to speed things up.

Use a hobby knife I chamfered the top edge of the hill.  I followed this up by sanding the edge with 220 sandpaper.  The goal was to give the hills a nice rolled edge that looks great and still had enough flat surface that the hills were playable.

With the hills done I based coated the hills with Brown craft paint from Michaels.  In terms of paint, the cheaper the better.  I then dry brushed Golden Brown onto the hills paying particular attention to any rocky textures.

Once the paint was dry I set up a flocking area.  Over newspaper I used a Styrofoam cut to create a pedestal.

I set the hills on the pedestal, this allowed an excess glue to drip off on to the newspaper.

I applied a 50/50 mix of PVA glue to water to the hill surfaces that would get flocked with a sponge brush.

I then used a sieve to sprinkle flock over the wet surface.

I shook off any excess flock onto the newspaper.

Once the glue was dry I went back over the flock with the 50/50 PVA glue/water mixture.  I used a sieve to apply 2mm static grass.  It was a real fun project and it just goes to prove that a plan and a little motivation goes a long way.  More pictures of the hills in action can be found on the Ohiohammer website.

If you are interested in learning a bit more about this project head over to the Ohiohammer website where I posted an Xtra Points covering the project.