How do I make a diorama base

First: Figure out where you are going to put it. Second: Think about dust.You might want a cover. Third: Do you have kids, pets, or a wife with a dust rag?  They can be somewhat interchangeable in their destructive tendencies. Cheap is plywood. Put some strips of solid wood on the edges with white glue and finishing nails. Put some felt pads underneath so you don't scratch your shelf. Run some sand though a screen to get smaller particles. Smear white glue all over the base just thick enough to look white, and dump the sand on thick. Press the sand in with a block of wood or something. Don't push it.  That will give you a cheap good looking base. If you wanted terrain, you should have thought of that before you put all that sand on. Plaster of Paris on wood , screening is cheap for hills. Cheap adobe structures at a larger scale can be cardboard assembled with a hot glue gun and covered with sand. Use screened, and dyed sawdust for cheap grass. Supplies from the model making companies will improve quality. If you lift the the base, then you can have space for a few wires and a battery or power supply and add a few LED lights. Find a woman (to cover the embarassment) and get some dollhouse catalogs to  look at what they have to offer. I buy from Northeast Scale Models, a dealer in basswood and dollhouses.Of ocurse, the dollhouse material only applies to very large scale projects. Model railroad materials (Walthers Catalog) is useful for smaller scales.

something that works great for groundwork is sheetrock mud. I use that stuff all the time and it comes in a 5 gallon pale for cheap.

thanks for your help

Don Stauffer

If this is your first attempt, I'd pick up a book on making dioramas, or else a book on model railroad scenery building.

And start with a smaller diorama.you need to crawl before you can walk.

There are several diorama how-to books.  Buy three or four and see how others have done it.

You sort of have two choices- one is to use a prepared base with edges already molded.  The cheaper but harder way is to use plywood, particle board, or regular wide board stock and edge it yourself.

In either case you need to do the groundwork yourself.  There are several choices here.  You can use plaster of paris, paper mache, or commercial stuff (much of which is also paper mache).  I use the latter stuff myself.

After getting it down and dry you add grass, dirt, or whatever.  The model railroad section of hobby shops will offer a lot of options.

If this is your first attempt, I'd pick up a book on making dioramas, or else a book on model railroad scenery building.

Mini art has ALOT of building, some being middle eastern, you could invest in them and they also sell premade groundwork for roads and such, just search around online.

www.scalehobbyist.com for example