Building the Wyrmwood Forest

So, I'm working toward a heavily miniature-focused Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The first encounters are going to take place in the hamlet of Glimmerdell and the nearby Wyrmwood Forest.

That means I need trees - lots of 'em.

I tried to source trees for this project from various outlets, but it turns out that decent-looking, properly scaled miniature trees are prohibitively expensive in the numbers I require (several dozen). My solution was to go with a mix of cheap prefab trees from Amazon and hand-built trees using a variety of armatures and flocking methods. The prefab trees are a bit small, but adequate. And with a little sprucing up, they look pretty nice on the table.

Even with two dozen prefab tress, this turned out to be a laborious and time-consuming process. I spent most of my free time the last week (and a huge chunk of my long holiday weekend) building, basing, and flocking trees. Except for five trees, including my "hero" tree (made of sagebrush, seafoam, and flock) the first wave of fifty-plus Wyrmwood Forest trees is complete - here are some post-completion and in-progress pics:

On the outskirts of Glimmerdell, at the edge of the Wyrmwood Forest, Sir Griswold - aka Griswold the Grim - prepares to do battle with an angry owlbear... 

The prefab trees based and Woodland Scenics armatures ready for bending and basing.

Everything based and ready for next steps.

Bases filled out with patching plaster. Working on stands for the front edge of the forest to break up the uniformity of the round bases. Postponed this because I have a limited supply of Cintra sheets at the moment and want to use them for roads.

The three handmade tree types (from left to right): Woodland Scenics plastic armatures and clump foliage; sagebrush "armature" with seafoam (awaiting flock); and WS plastic armature with polyfiber and coarse flock. The last one is the fastest to produce and makes really nice trees.

Prefab trees with a sprinkle of fine green flock to break up the bright, fluorescent yellow-green leaves on top of them.