"Lichen for bocage" Topic

Yesterday a gathered a plastic bag full of lichen and was thinking of building some bocage out of it. Has anyone tried this with natural materials before?

I'm thinking of using cardboard as a base, paint and flock it a little and then add painted lichen on sticks or something else that will give it some form and glue it all togehter. A couple of different spray colors (or acrylic paint) should give good color to the lichen foliage/bocage section.

Sounds like a model railroader building a hedge or forest. Carry on and just expand your searches for inspiration.

I've seen examples where a gamer took those wide popsickle art sticks, clay, finishing nails or maybe toothpicks, lichen, and flock to make some bocage for a game. He mass-produced a lot of them.

If I recall correctly, the clay formed a bank on the sticks. Then nails or toothpicks were regularly spaced along the top of the bank. The lichen was glued to the nails, covered with watered-down white glue and the green foliage flock sprinkled on.

rvandusen: Thanks for the tips. I might use hobby clay or something like it to build bases and put natural sticks and branches on before it dries. Then probably I'll paint the clay and put on some flock, and lastly sticking the (processed) lichen on for the foliage. Finishing touches would be to flock the lichen cover to add "leaves" to the set with watered down glue and then some paint on the whole thing. Sounds like this will work. I'll link the lichen processing site I found here:

link

I'm using 2 adhesive floor tiles from the dollar store stuck back to back as the base for my bocage. I'm making the bank out of pink foam board.

I would use a tongue suppressor as a base (wide Popsicle stick) and then glue a 1cm deep length of stout card down the centre, edge up – so that you have made a rigid 'T' section, upside down!

The advantages are the base is rigid and the card will not shrink as clay would with drying, which in turn would warp the base.

Glue the card on both faces and the tongue suppressor and add your foliage and when dry, glue and flock for the leaf effect. You could try one with materials immediately at hand and see how it goes.

You don't mention scale, but for my own hedge for 10mm, I glued down unwanted old 6mm resin walls onto a base and then glued and flocked with clump foliage.

I used a lot of lichen when I was making my bocage. If you stack it "up" instead of "sideways", it really takes on a tree-like appearance. Interspersed with some Woodland Scenics trees, all built up on a ridge of kitty litter and flocked to make it look overgrown … I was pleased with the end results.