"Making the most of cheap eBay trees" Topic

Recently I bought some trees off eBay from China, at ridiculously low prices. Even the shipping from China to New Zealand cost less than if I were to post a standard letter to the next city. How this company makes money, I don't know – but I'm not complaining!

For a review with a link and more pictures, see my blog: link

That is stunning. Many thanks for the heads up. Whoever said all you guys can do is shear sheep and thump Wales…?

Nice trees – did you just bung "trees" into the ebay search?

Great idea. Also have a bunch of these lying around and wondering how to tackle them. Washers might be the thing.

wow , have to get some of these …

Green Tiger-

Try searching n Model Railroad Trees. Watch the sizes carefully, though. Some are closer to shrubs than trees.

I too have taken advantage of the ridiculously cheap trees from China. I have found that the foliage material is pretty loosely attached, so I first spray mine with something to help adhere it in place, usually just a liberal coat or two of Matte Varnish. For the garish ones, I just oversprayed with some better green shades from my airbrush. I stuck mine to washers with epoxy putty + superglue, then painted and flocked the bases. On some of them I ran a quick grey drybrush over the trunks

I've recently had luck using hot glue -- put a big blob down and stick the tree in it (the blob is on a plastic base) and immediately dump flock on it and use your fingers to shape the blob better and push the flock into the glue, then hold the tree upright until it cools, usually about 10 seconds.
I've also drilled holes in wooden Litko bases, which works, but the ends of the trees can be nonuniform in size and I still need a little glue to hold them in place.

Thanks for the thought, never had even considered buying model railroad supplies off ebay, and the prices make it worth the extra work. Not just the trees, but static grass, jungle plants, the works.

Thanks!

I stick mine in air dry clay and glue to washers. I then made up some forest templates with MDF and added Litko magnet bases randomly to help the trees stay standing.
You can also enhance the appearance by hitting the trunks and branches with some matte paint.

Here's a shot of some of mine in action (so to speak).

[URL=http://s974.photobucket.com/user/rbliss999/media/F0BE310C-CBC5-42E4-9BAD-BAB7969A82DC.jpg.html]

I've bought many packs of trees from China. Inexpensive and they arrive rather quickly. Takes a little work to get them onto a base since they don't have their own base like Woodland Scenics but it works.

Yeah me too. I'm a big fan of the Chinese plastic tree and there is a lot of variety.

For basing I stick the trunk into a ball of Milliput then smooth it out directly on the base. Don't even have to glue it. It dries I flock it, no problem.

Thanks Rich