Materials

• Pieces of foam
• Hot wire scroll table and scroll cutter
• White glue (a.k.a. PVA glue, a.k.a. Elmer's Glue) and/or Elmer's Craft Bond (spray glue)
• Appropriate flock (I used mostly Woodland Scenics "Green Blend" Blended Turf)
• Large paint brush (1" wide head)
• Behr Premium Plus Flat Finish - Custom Color match from Delta Ceramcoat Storm Grey*
• Behr Premium Plus Flat Finish - Custom Color match from Delta Ceramcoat Dark Brown*
• Craft paints (for highlighting and small stuff)
  • Delta Ceramcoat Rain Grey
  • Delta Ceramcoat Quaker Grey

* - I just took the bottles to Home Depot's paint area and they mixed up a quart of each color in ten minutes and it only cost $9 per quart!

Procedure

1. Mark and cut out the uppermost tier of the hill. Mark out and cut the next tier down and so on. I chose to make mostly two-tier hills (2 levels, ~1" high each) and a few three tier hills. One tier is not really tactically significant, so I don't bother with it.

2. Types of Faces/slopes

• Grassy, contour lines: I like this for its tactical feel, as military maps are drawn with a contour line approach. The ideal approach is with a sandable foam, though, as slightly rounding the top edges will dramatically improve the adhesion of flock.

  Sharp edge (more flock on bottom picture)	Rounded Edge (more flock on bottom picture)

• Rocky: If you want a rocky hill then be sure to make exrta cuts on the appopriate faces with your hot wire to give plenty of sharp edges to highlight later. Note that I cut across the top of the foam to create a flat textured surface instead of leaving the original flat foam surface.
  
• Gentle, grassy slope: If you are going for a grassy hill, you might want to go for a gentle slope or no slope at all.

  I did not make any of these yet, but maybe someday soon. Basically, the standard GW slopes are like this.

  
  
• Hybrid rocky/grassy: My hands down favorites.

3. So now you should have a bare piece of foam cut to the desired shape and size. Put on the basecoat using latex paint. If you are painting grey and brown, let one color dry before you paint the other. I painted the grey on first, then the brown.

4.Paint the bottom of the piece. That's right, seal the whole thing up. Let's make them last.

5. Highlight any rocky features with Delta Ceramcoat Rain Grey and then Delta Ceramcoat Hippo Grey. Do both highlights, trust me. It makes a big difference. With a little practice, you can do this step with the 1" brush as well, which greatly speeds things up. Be sure and rinse the brush after every one or two hills to prevent damage to the brush. You will want to dry the water from the brush pretty thoroughly before doing more dry brushing. By the time you dry brush two hills, wash the brush, and dry the brush, you can go right back to the same hills and do the second highlight; it will be dry enough. Here's a before and after so you can see the stark difference highlighting makes.

6. For hills with any grass on them, apply white glue to the spots where you want flock (the brown areas).

7. Simply shake the flock onto the hill (hopefully you have a drop cloth or paper beneath to catch the excess flock).

8. Tap the hill from the bottom to help tamp down the flock.

9. Let the glue/flock dry for at least an hour. Overnight is even better.

10. Invert the hill and gently tap the bottom to free up excess flock. For hybrid hills, you might find some flock sticking to areas that were not painted with glue. Just use some canned air to carefully blow that off.

11. I use a standardized sealing approach - 3 layers of gloss followed by one layer of matte. For more detail see my page on sealers. (Note: Because terrain is so big, I tried to save money and tested Krylon Matte Finish instead of Testor's Dullcote, but it was not matte enough. Stick with the Testor's Dullcote).

Additional Notes - Glue and Flock

You can paint on glue with brush-on white glue or slightly thinned white glue (I use about 1 part water to 3 parts Elmer's Glue; any thinner and it drips everywhere); I also tried Elmer's Craft Bond spray-on adhesive. The later seemed to work very well. Here is my first layer of flock, using 3:1 glue:water

Sharp edge, flock sticks poorly to edge	Rounded edge, takes flock better

After sealing and everything, I noticed that the hills looked like they were balding. So I wanted to try another coat of flock. Not wanting to try and paint glue on top of flock, I used Elmer Craft Bond. It seemed to work quite well. Here is the result of the second layer:

Sharp edge, flock sticks poorly to edge	Rounded edge, takes flock better

I still need to go back and try a single coat of flock with Elmer's Craft Bond to assess if it does a better job.

Materials

• Pieces of foam
• Hot wire scroll table and scroll cutter
• Large paint brush (1" wide head)
• White glue (a.k.a. PVA glue, a.k.a. Elmer's Glue) and/or Elmer's Craft Bond (spray glue)
• Any black spray paint or primer that is non-latex
• Craft paints (for highlighting)
  • Delta Ceramcoat Storm Grey
  • Delta Ceramcoat Rain Grey Grey

Procedure

1. Because we will erode the styrofoam, I highly recommend cutting your hill from a single piece, as the glue line between multiple layers will create an irregular corrosion of the hill surface and obvious artificial lines will show through.

This hill is a little more elaborate. I want it to reflect a mineral vein eventually. I added large rocks first, then smaller rocks, a strange coral-like branch made from pipecleaner and a base (below).

2. Spray paint on the surface to erode it in a controlled fashion. Basically, spray too close, about 3"-8". Notice how the glued down rock areas did not erode in the same way. That works fine for my mineral vein idea, but it illustrates that glued together foam can create problem areas, e.g. with multi-tiered hills.

3. Now that you've done the damage, seal the piece up with glue or paint. I simply painted on dilute glue for the sample show below. For the other rocks, I simply went straight to spray on black Latex paint. Because of the nooks and crannies, a spray paint works better, so sealing it or using a less aggressive system like spray on latex paint is best. The ideal approach is to seal with glue first, then it does not matter what kind of spray paint you are using. It would not hurt to paint the bottom with rush on Latex at this point.

4. If the rock is not black yet, paint it black.

5. Highlight by dry brushing with Delta Ceramcoat Storm Grey and then Delta Ceramcoat Rain Grey. Do both highlights, trust me. It makes a big difference. With a little practice, you can do this step with the 1" brush as well, which greatly speeds things up. Be sure and rinse the brush after every one or two hills to prevent damage to the brush. You will want to dry the water from the brush pretty thoroughly before doing more dry brushing. By the time you dry brush two hills, wash the brush, and dry the brush, you can go right back to the same hills and do the second highlight; it will be dry enough. Here's a before and after so you can see the stark difference highlighting makes.

Note: the pictures below look a lot brighter than real life. There is also a distortion because the spray on black latex had a satin finish, so the recesses are shinier than the highlights.

Here I have painted the rocks with Citadel Colour Beaten Copper, washed with Delta Ceramcoat Black, then highlighted with Citadel Colour Shining Gold. Then I painted white glue around the base and immersed it in white sand to base it.

6. I use a standardized sealing approach - 3 layers of gloss followed by one layer of matte. For more detail see my page on sealers. (Note: Because terrain is so big, I tried to save money and tested Krylon Matte Finish instead of Testor's Dullcote, but it was not matte enough. Stick with the Testor's Dullcote).

I painted the sand with the same color scheme as the rocks then sealed it.