90's Inspired Shrubbery
Remember back in the 90's, when you were done with a project, showed up with it at your gaming club, and then someone made a remark that made you rethink and suddenly your project was not done anymore? Well, never happened to me, as I did not visit gaming clubs, always played with a rather small number of friends at one of our homes, but I am trying to tell a story here!
Nowadays, this of course happens online. Recently it did happen to me. I wanted to close the natural terrain for this project with the
90's Inspired Woods. But then
@symphonicpoet made a remark about sweetgum seed pods.
Oh, those acorn cap plants are great! I recall someone from France making sweetgum seed pods. (I jokingly offered to send them buckets of the stuff since I rake them up and throw them out by the barrel every year, but I'm not sure it'd be affordable after shipping. And I'm not sure how customs would like American seedpods showing up at CDG. Never you mind that some American rootstock saved their wine industry.) Anyway . . . hmm . . . you give me ideas.

Fantastic!
First I did not think much of it, never having heard of these, but somehow this comment stuck with me. Couple days later, lying on the couch in the evening, short of falling asleep, I thought of sweetgum seed pods again, googled them, thought, well, they would make for nice terrain, but where to get them from? Ah, quickly check Amazon... available... not expensive... Two days later I had a bag full of them.
So instead of starting on man made terrain, I will do one last natural terrain set for the project. Thank you
@symphonicpoet
Again, this fits the retro vibe well, building terrain not out of kits, but out of stuff that you make into terrain; just like in the 90's.
I started by drawing base shapes on two A4 sized sheets of 3mm ePVC, having later storage in mind.
Luckily, all known appearance of these alien shrubbery grow in more or less straight lines, which made the design of the bases easy. I cut 2.5cm x 14.5cm strips. Need to pay attention of how wide the pods are, if they stick out too much over the sides, I will not be able to fit all the bases in a box later.
Then I made 3 oval bases, one will be a dried out pond, tying in with the
Parched Ground, one other a slight mound, tying in with the
Rock Spires.
I cut the bases with a craft knife, bevelled the edges, and then gave them a sanding.
To build up some height, I used aluminium foil.
The pods were then glued in place with hot glue. On the two oval pieces, I placed subsequent pods beside this first pot, only slightly higher, so we get a terraced effect. On one of the bases even with a little path running down the middle.
I ended up not using four bases I previously cut, to be able to fit everything into the A4 box later.