As a small addendum to my original post on leaves, I've noticed a few sellers on ebay offering "natural leaves". Rather than paying £5 or more for a bag, these can be collected for free from the female catkins of Birch trees. Silver Birch are particularly easy to identify with their lovely pale trunks. The female catkins mature through late Summer and I collected these in early-mid August.
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| Silver Birch catkins. |
I collected the catkins when they were still fairly compact and green, this makes them easier to handle. If you pick them too late, they just disintegrate in your hands!
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| Crumbling the dry catkins. |
After leaving them in the sun for a few days, they go brown and slightly fluffy looking. Gently crumbling them between your fingers releases all the seeds (small and brown with ultra-thin "wings" on each side).
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| A spacer from within the catkin. |
What we want are the little "spacers" that make up the structure of the catkin. They're too large for 15mm but work pretty well for 28mm scale, if you squint a bit they look vaguely like sycamore or maple leaves, albeit with 3 lobes rather than 5.
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| A lone adventurer approaches the entrance... |
They look good scattered in small numbers to add a bit of character to scenery. You don't need many to give a good effect.
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| An ancient bronze statue. |
Taking a few photographs gave me an excuse to get some of my dungeon out for a play.
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| The halfling isn't sure he wants to drink from the stagnant fountain. |
Number 1 son hasn't seen my dungeon before so he was eager to put a few pieces together and get out lots of the smaller objects to dress the scenery, especially all my treasure piles!
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| You can never have too much treasure... |
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