Sep 1 -Apply the product 'No more Nails' to your bases. Use a decent amount. I like this stuff because it gives some hold straight away, while at the same time giving you about 5 mins to adjust your placing. Its also cheap and the gun makes it easy to apply. One tube like this will last for several armies.
After your happy with your figure placement grab an old brush, dabbed in water to break up the paste. Water doesn't ruin the holding properties for our purposes. It does allow you to build up some area a bit and provide a base for the sand.
Now add some smalls rocks, followed by fine sand. Allow to dry over night. The instructions say 24 hours but we are not too fussy. We are not building shelves here.
Once dry use a steel ruler to rub down the edges a bit. You don't want any texture on the edges of the base so that they line up together. Now add some undercoat. I only really bother with the edges as these are the parts that get abuse. You may choose to be less lazy than me.
Mow apply your top coats. I use the anitas, three shade earth colours as provided by barrule.com.
This was a heavy dry brush. Don't rub too much paint off the brush as there isn't much pigment in cheap paints like these.
Final highlight is very quick, just to bring the detail out. Doesn't look great here due to my camera and lighting.
I now apply tufts and bits of scenics with a tacky glue. PVA doesn't work so well for these bits I find.
Finally I water down some PVA and paint onto the base in patches. Make sure the edges have more "clutter" if you want to make them blend in together.
Hope this helps someone.
