Inexpensive pine trees for 15mm games

[Blockhead123]

For the UK Wargamers in this community, 'The Works' discount stores have started to stock some of their Christmas ranges - including packs of snow-covered twisted wire Christmas trees (about 5cm tall).
For £2 you get 8 trees, which is pretty good value. If you remove them from their wooden bases, they are okay (if basic) 'as is' - but if like me, you have some suitable dark green spray paint (to cover up the snow effect), some diluted white glue and a supply of terrain scatter grass/foliage - you can turn them into some very nice pine woods for your table - have a look at the pictures

[Belgian]

Great job, like them a lot! Which flock did you use?

[FifteensAway]

The flock is a nice touch but I think just the spray paint does the trick.  And if you have access to grape wood you can get some pretty nice trunks - drill a hole for the wire into the length of grape wood and insert the wire and, voila, a tree with a trunk.  And drill another hole at the other end of the trunk and you can insert a flat headed nail and then you have a base for the tree to glue to a stand. 

Have similar trees in my stash that didn't have the snow effect, just the wooden bases.  And those wooden bases might be useful so I wouldn't discard them out of hand.

[Blockhead123]

Belgian - thanks for the kind words! As regards the flock, I was lucky enough to pick up a job lot of assorted Woodland Scenics scatter a couple of years ago, so I have used a mix - two colours of their 'foliage' and one of 'autumn turf'

Fifteens Away - thanks for the suggestion about the grape wood, sounds like a good idea. I was actually thinking of using some old brown wire insulation that I have (already a tube and east to cut) - I actually spent some time this afternoon cutting out bases for woods out of some scrap mdf sheet (actually an old cupboard back), so should be able to get those made up over the weekend. I'll post some more pictures when I have done them.
I am keeping the wooden bases, probably to use as painting stands for 20mm figures

[AndrewBeasley]

Viv (Knights of Dice) has posted a video about adding 3D printed trunks to his Aldi trees

https://youtu.be/UQhzxfDbeRU?si=kYTjoIBC0uxvuXue

An earlier video showed him hacking them about and flocking them.  Must be the time of year 

[majorsmith]

They look great! Flock really finished them off nicely

[SgtSlag]

Bill Armontrout, Editor of TheMiniaturesPage.com, recently published an article similar to this.  I don't remember if he painted them, following that with glue and flock, though.  Bill purchased his pine trees from a local Dollar store, I believe.

Your results are superb.  Thank you for sharing.  Cheers!

[YPU]

This may not fly everywhere, but down here in the low countries gardening/plant stores (big ones, usually out in the countryside) will have big x-mas displays going. Right after the holiday some of them will sell the trees used in them by the bag for dirt cheap. I was lucky to pick some up, ranging from 3 to 12 inches IIRC. Your foliage trick looks fantastic, I really should do that with mine it looks like a big upgrade over the bare spines IMHO. Flock/foam has that right level of fuzziness to it that your mind fills in the details of a tree at a distance, while the simple spine limb doesnt.

I would also note that at 5cm they are fine for 6mm 1/300 games as well! A 15 meter tall pine tree is quite tame in fact, fully grown pines run the 30 to 50 meter range!