Things Get Painted - Can't see the MDF for the trees!

So this should be a quick post. Over the last week, in small moments of downtime, I've constructed some semi-pre-built terrain.

Over MOAB a few months ago, it was pointed out I might have been running Malifaux demos, and I had forgotten my terrain. I remembered that Bitz Galaxy had some plastic boxes of trees, so went to grab some. $40 later, I had a cluster of tightly packed trees to use for terrain... And then didn't run demos. Oh well, I've got some trees...

They have stayed in their boxes until last Friday. I had grabbed some MDF terrain bases from Aetherworks, and while watching Critical Role, I dunked the bottom of each tree into pva, then placed it on the base, sticking 2-3 trees on each. 

Pictured above are a few of the tree stands. I quite literally had the upended lid of aquadhere, lowered the tree base (they have some stands fashioned like roots) into the glue, and sat the, on the base. Leaving them overnight let them set solid. I also used this opportunity to do the same thing to some aquarium plants I had for the same reason, and gathered up a plaster pillar I had got through this step already.

A few nights later the bases were coated with pva again, and given a layer of fine beach sand, then left to dry for the day while I went to work. It's a similar colour to the MDF, so not noticeable straight away, but it was a bit of texture.

Now I'll skip a step, because it's not obvious at the end. I got some old Derivan inks, and mixed up some Chestnut and Yellow ink to an orange brown. I painted this onto the sand with a large brush, letting it soak into the sand, and sat the, outside to dry for a few hours (Ah, Australia, land of the perpetual barbecue...)

I considered dry rushing some texture, but realised that the next step made it unnecessary...

I used some dry grass and summer grass from Gale Force 9 to coat all of the bases in grass. In retrospect, I could have done the same with one tub of grass, as they hold a lot, but I wasn't sure on my calculations till I started. The brown inking isn't noticeable, but in the event of the static grass shedding, it should hopefully look like dirt underneath. That's right, I tried to future proof the terrain. 

Now all that's left is to give the, a topcoat to seal them. However, these should be making their way onto one of my gaming table soo, so hopefully I will have an action shot of the trees in the near future!