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Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: TheBlackCrane on September 20, 2019, 01:26:50 PM

Title: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: TheBlackCrane on September 20, 2019, 01:26:50 PM

As the title says really - where does anyone source jungle plants from?

I've read lots of threads around using cheap aquarium plastic plants, artificial plants from craft stores etc etc., which seems a good route for me, but trawling places like ebay everything I find seems to be 10-20cm tall or doesn't state how big they are (I guess in fish tanks matters of scale are less problematic? I could well be wrong!)

Considering I'm thinking scenery for 10-15mm I fear many would be rather large, for all that jungle undergrowth is quite large anyway, but I wondered whether anyone knows of any good specific sources - shops/ebay stores or suchlike - which you could point me to? Ideally which state how large things are.

I'm happy to enhance, paint and so forth, so cheap options are good  :D

Thanks!

Rob

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: Cubs on September 20, 2019, 01:50:42 PM

For small scales, good old garden moss is a winner. Soak it overnight in 50/50 water and glycerine with a splash of green ink to preserve it and stop the colour fading, then dry it thoroughly in a slightly warm oven. Then you should be able to store the stuff indefinitely.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: Ockman on September 23, 2019, 02:50:13 PM

Inspired by Spacejacker's jungle terrain, I bought some soap dishes from Flying Tiger Copenhagen (TGR/Tiger)http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/2015/03/jungle-terrain.html (http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/2015/03/jungle-terrain.html)

(https://live.staticflickr.com/4258/35616342232_14c5558771_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/Wgi4G5)Skulltaker (https://flic.kr/p/Wgi4G5) by Oscar Falk (https://www.flickr.com/photos/150839249@N02/), on Flickr

(https://live.staticflickr.com/4032/35397683930_388ce81dee_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/VVYocm)IMG_20170517_210406_886 (https://flic.kr/p/VVYocm) by Oscar Falk (https://www.flickr.com/photos/150839249@N02/), on Flickr

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: Dr. Zombie on September 23, 2019, 08:43:50 PM

Gardening centers and interior decorating shops often have a section with plastic plants. IKEA also has some very good plastic plants.

It might be difficult to find some suitable for 10-15mm though.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: ragbones on September 23, 2019, 11:46:09 PM

A store that sells aquarium supplies.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: War Monkey on September 24, 2019, 12:05:38 AM

Model Railroad Supplies, online like on Ebay, you can get different sizes and styles of palm trees and plants. I'm  looking into a fake grass for reptiles as underbrush at pet stores as soon  as get home from  this trip.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: FifteensAway on September 24, 2019, 02:51:21 AM

As ragbones says, a good first place to start is a store that sells plastic plants for aquariums - and also check out the sections for lizards and such.  Sometimes a better sources is a good craft store with plastic and silk plants (avoid the dried real ones, tend to by too mess for my tastes), keep a sharp eye out for items that are easy to adapt.  Just yesterday I drove the wife to a Michael's so she could hunt for things for her jewelry making hobby and I found a plant with plastic or silk leaves and lots of 'flowers' on spikes sticking out decorated with a bunch of tiny little beads.  I pulled off all the flowers to make nice bushes.  And I plan to spray them different colors to add variety.  Also check discount stores.  We have a chain called Ross out here and they usually have a section for plastic plants and I've found many useful items there.  Don't forget to scan the sections for kids toys, too; treasures can be found there occasionally.  More rarely those sections that have been selling 'fairy' furnishings might yield a find now and then, same store yesterday yielded up a couple of half off trees in autumn colors.  Oh, wait, those were in the Halloween decor area.   

I speak as a died-in-the-wool long time 15 mm aficionado.  Oh, and you can adapt model railroad products too, of course, but expect to pay more for those.

The main trick is too look past the item itself and look at its parts to see what can be used in the smaller scale.  A good hunter will bring home quite a bag of 'provender' for table decorating.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: TheBlackCrane on September 28, 2019, 03:58:18 PM

Thanks all, I have ordered some aquarium plants to have a go with, so will probably end up putting the results of my chopping and rearranging up on here. I also managed to get hold of one of those saebeholders via ebay, so shall take that apart too and put it to use, and see what I can come up with.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: War Monkey on September 28, 2019, 06:53:07 PM

You can check out Aliexpress as well. They sell lots of different palm trees and trees as well, currently I'm debating on a lot of 100 pieces that are just over 2 inches tall each, for 27 USD, reason for this that not only I can use them as Palm Trees, you can remove the palms and use them as ground level palms as well.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: FifteensAway on September 29, 2019, 11:48:25 PM

Was at the local SprawlMart yesterday and found a big kids set of dinosaurs that included one nice big rock formation, five trees, and nine little rocks.  Not exactly for jungle in my case since I will be using them for acacia trees in my plains of Africa setup.  Liked them so much I went back today and bought two more sets so I now have 15 trees, 3 rock formations (that look good before a repaint), and 27 solo rocks (that likely will be used as game markers of some sort because they don't really look like rocks).  For me, the iconic acacia tree is part of the opening credits of the television program Nature and these match nicely and scale well with my 15 mm giraffe herd.  I've heard tell that the reason acacia trees look like they do - at least the ones I want to replicate - is because giraffes graze them into that look.  These trees I bought have the foliage a bit above the heads of my adult giraffe so that is just grand.

But those trees could be easily adaptable for jungle trees.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: FreakyFenton on September 29, 2019, 11:53:46 PM

Usually? China, via amazon. Often works surprisingly easy. And you get bulks of them.

Gardening centers as some have said, aquarium plants not so much, oddly there quite expensive here at times.

Flying tiger also exists here in Germany, but seldom have plastic plants. But 1 pound shops/ 1 Euro shops sometimes have fitting stuff.

Model train shops have a wider variety, depends on cost though. Interior design shops and discounters have plants during seasons, such as for Christmas (christmas trees in plastic/ pine trees) or autumny leaves for Halloween (who look convincingly like jungle terrain after a coat of rattlecan colour).

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: War Monkey on September 30, 2019, 03:23:41 PM

You can also use fake eyelashes for tall sprouts of grasses for in and around  your terrain piece as well, you can pick them up for 1 USD in the dollar stores, they work well for both 15s  and 28s.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: Ockman on September 30, 2019, 06:42:53 PM

If you need more Sæbeholders, I can buy them localy for about £3/pack + postage. Just send me a PM.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: FierceKitty on October 01, 2019, 02:39:27 AM

Quote from: FifteensAway on September 24, 2019, 02:51:21 AM

I speak as a died-in-the-wool long time 15 mm aficionado.  Oh, and you can adapt model railroad products too, of course, but expect to pay more for those.

A dead sheep?

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm
Post by: FierceKitty on October 01, 2019, 03:05:23 AM

As a devoted 10mm gamer, I make a lot of use of 6mm terrain (which leads into another debate nobody ever concedes an inch in). With vegetation in particular, this works well, since trees range from smaller than a man to towering arborial...well, towers, I suppose (no prizes for poetry today).  Don't worry too much about scale with your vegetable dishes.

I got all the palms I wanted some years ago, first as architectural models (pretty but pricey), then by checking out the tattiest plastic toy dinosaur sets in the local supermarket. Most of the pack was given away to local bratlings, but the trees were enough to make it very economical even so.

The big weekend market near my house has an extensive floral and decorative section with masses of plastic vegetation. I've got useful mimosa thorntrees from them by buying one bag of bits for foliage, then another collection of sprues that only needed to have ghastly plastic flowers popped off to turn them into good tree trunks. It's important to remember that soft plastic won't hold paint (those old enough to remember Airfix figures, you might need a drink to drown the memory), but it can be coloured with an indelible felt tip (on the table, black makes an acceptable trunk).

There's an American conservation company that makes very attractive souvenir fund-raiser deciduous trees.I'm afraid I bought stuff from them years ago, and have no memory of who they are.

Pines - check out cake decoration ranges.

Title: Re: First attempt at jungle-y bases
Post by: TheBlackCrane on October 19, 2019, 03:36:33 PM

Thanks for all the tips everyone - thought I'd stick a photo of my first attempts here:

(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_Jd1lRFxJaE/XasdMaX3wLI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/MhaJK4-lu_krkguTRxAxv8VmGFYyS_1iACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/DSCN2225.JPG)

Made with a variety of tufts and aquarium plant cutoffs, much of which was embedded into polyfiller. I didn't stop to think at the time how difficult it would be to paint the base and filler with plastic shrubs etc sticking out of it, so they look a bit of a mess, but on the other hand jungle (or in this case 'generic dense vegetation') isn't neat and tidy!

Quite pleased with the first effort - the next phase will be to make up some bigger bases that the round ones can just drop into or not, pretty much stealing the idea from Ockman's blog  :D

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: Brandlin on October 19, 2019, 04:13:23 PM

I really like them.
Too many of the cheap aquarium plants look just like heap aquarium plants - all monochrome and shiny. Your foliage has colour gradation and a matt look. Well done.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: FifteensAway on October 20, 2019, 07:08:29 AM

Decent first attempt - or reveal as the case may be.  Another way to go about it, before adding any tufts of course, is to assemble the basic unit and then spray paint the whole thing with a base color and then use floral paints (if you can find them) to create tonal variations.  Or maybe use something like Montana range paints - but their pigments may be too thick to be workable.  The floral paints are pretty opaque.  You could also have applied daubs of acrylic paint above the base and sprinkle on soil textures.  That would add a nice dimension.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: War Monkey on October 20, 2019, 08:58:42 PM

Looking really good!

Here 's a link that may help;
https://1000footgeneral.blogspot.com/2017/06/making-jungle-terrain.html  (https://1000footgeneral.blogspot.com/2017/06/making-jungle-terrain.html)

I know it has inspired me.

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: Grimmnar on November 02, 2019, 04:12:57 AM

Quote from: Brandlin on October 19, 2019, 04:13:23 PM

I really like them.
Too many of the cheap aquarium plants look just like heap aquarium plants - all monochrome and shiny. Your foliage has color gradation and a matt look. Well done.

So with that said what is the best way to correct this?
Can they just be painted or just doesn't come out?
Any type of different paint prep?

Grimm

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: FifteensAway on November 02, 2019, 02:23:28 PM

"died in the wool" oopsographical error!   lol  Should be "dyed in the wool" of course.   ;)

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: FierceKitty on February 21, 2020, 12:56:49 AM

The first version sounds much more interesting!

Title: Re: Where do you buy your 'jungle' plants? For 10/15mm - First attempt on pg2
Post by: Shahbahraz on February 21, 2020, 03:28:27 PM

I just airbrushed mine, they came out pretty well, and I didn't bother too much about over-spray, jungles are plenty of colours. So it was just a matter of using plenty of colour variety.