how can i make the ground

Well, good luck with it! I'm sure you'll find lots of helpful advice here.

For mine, I start with regular old plaster (there are much better ways that I've read about, including commercial products like Flex Paste. There's much more on that subject here, I'm sure, than I can help you with.

As for the ground cover itself, I have recently fallen in love with tree moss. I used it in my last diorama and I'm pleased with the results. I picked it up at my local Hobby Lobby in the floral department, packaged under the name Sheet Moss by a company called Forest Naturals. It looks good to me!

This picture shows pretty well how it looks in the finished product:

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I'll try to find an article that I read the other day--it goes in-depth on how to build up and finish off the groundwork, the best materials to use, etc.

Good luck!

~drucifer

I use Celluclay, a commercial papier mache mixed with a dollop of white glue, railroad ballast for texture and earth colored acrylic paint along with some water mixed to a thick oatmeal consistencey. If there's any build up of terrain, lay down layers of styrofoam so the celluclay will dry quicker. Dry a few hooke in the base to give the celluclay more to bite.
When this is dry, I give it a wash and dry brush appropriate colors. For grass, I like Woodland Scenics fine turf and their long grass for, well, long grass. . El Viejo Dragon has some excellent dried grass/bush material. Take a look here http://www.milminwh.com/accessories_%26_groundwork.htm for some examples of good commercial product. Armand Bayardi prodces some super resi scasting of dead trees, rock walls and other materials. Scroll down this page http://www.sentinelminiatures.com/Page_13_Sentin.html for some examples.

I do pretty much the same thing except insted of using FInew turf I use Woodland Scenics Static Grass. For bigger rocks I use kitty litter.

hey drucifer, please fill us in on the moss stuff, that looks great! Did you do anything special to it?

Celluclay...that's the stuff I was trying to think of!
I've vowed to do my next dio with that, rather than plaster, because of all the potential problems associated with plaster (haven't seen any yet, but it could happen!)

Look for the sheet moss anywhere that has a floral department, is my guess--Hobby Lobby, Michaels, MJDesigns, that sort of place. The stuff is obviously a by-product of the timber industry--it comes in a rolled-up sheet and when you unroll it, there's still bark stuck to the root system :) Peel off the bark so the stuff doesn't stand up too high and you're ready to go. I used scissors to cut basic shapes similar to the area I wanted to cover. It's around 2-3 bucks for a fairly large bag (enough to do about 3-4 times what I needed for the News From Home dio) and it doesn't require any special treatment other than a fixative (I used hair spray).

So just glue it to the base and spray with hairspray? sounds too easy for such good results! thanks, time for a trip to michaels.

It really is that easy :) Except you have to clean up the nasty bark mess afterward, which is really the hardest part. :)

When you glue that stuff down, get as near to the edges as you can and clip any runners that look too outrageous...overall, it's a simple enough solution. Gaps are easy to fill with small bits of the moss as it tears quite easily.

And now the bad news: The thickness and texture make it difficult to glue other pieces in place. I had a heck of a time with my trees, by CA glue eventually stuck 'em. For large, flat surfaces, I'd try cutting away an area slightly smaller than the surface to be glued, just to avoid the big tacky half-stuck messes that I ran into. I'm just glad the cobbles and the building were in place before I stuck the moss on !

QUOTE: railroad ballast for texture and earth colored acrylic paint along with some water mixed to a thick oatmeal consistencey

Makes for a great snack when you get the munches and dont want to stop modeling.
Just kidding...And if you work fast with the wet celluclay you can add other detail to it and it will stick real nice. Example, I hate drilling a million little hole for tall grass. But if the celluclay is still wet you can have your pre-cut tall grass ready to go, and just stick it in.

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2002/06/stuff_eng_tech_diorama_bases.htm

A step by step guide by someone slightly more competent than me. Enjoy,

Seb

ML,here`s a little somethin that I do and continue to do. Get yourself some small dollarstore plastic containers,go to Micheals and pickup a few various colours of decorator sands, pebbles,brick coloured rubble from Lemax etc. Pick up a potery plantpot or two and break them up and scoop up some real gravol from a building site.
Grass`s can be obtained from model railroad shops or model shops. All these things are placed in seperate containers and marked as to what they are and kept at your fingertips for groundwork use. As you become more familiar with how groundcover looks your collection of containers of stuff will grow! I also use crushed up kids chalks as rubble,cork bricks,cat litter and real beach sand. The possabilities are endless!
Hope this helps! Oh,btw,I don`t use cel-u-clay or plaster to form the ground, just my ground cover stuff and whiteglue/water mix to freeze it in place.