{"id":5622,"date":"2015-07-22T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T07:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brigademodels.co.uk\/Blog\/?p=5622"},"modified":"2015-08-10T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T22:18:13","slug":"islands-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brigademodels.co.uk\/Blog\/2015\/07\/islands-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Islands in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’ve always wanted to make some flying islands for Aeronef games, but never quite seem to be able to get around to it. But the other day I happened to watch Avatar again, and the sequence amongst the Hallelujah Mountains got me thinking again, and spurred me into action.<\/p>\n

The basis of the islands was lava rock, sold for barbecues – I’d used it in the past to make perfect asteroids for spaceship games, so I had half a box left from that project. You can get in DiY stores or supermarkets in the UK, or if you live on Hawaii, just pop up the nearest volcano… I selected half-a-dozen pieces which had a flat side which could be used to site buildings on, and drilled a hole to fit a steel screw in the base in each. This screw would then fix the islands to magnetic stands.<\/p>\n

The top was smoothed off with ready-mixed wall filler (Polyfilla, Tetrion or similar), which was painted green when dry. This made a flat(ish) base for the buildings.<\/p>\n

The pre-painted buildings were attached with clear glue (Uhu, Bostick etc) and the remainder of the green areas flocked. The final touch was to use a hot glue gun to stick on some trees and bushes.<\/p>\n

Although there were points during the process when I wondered how well they were going to turn out (but then I get that in every project), on the whole I’m pretty pleased with them. I didn’t make too many this time, I wanted to have six finished ones rather than twelve which I ran out of time on. So I’ll probably make some more later – ideally I’d like to find some larger pieces of lava rock for bigger layouts.<\/p>\n