Clump-Foliage is great for making trees, bushes, bocage and so on. Making your own is fun and you can experiment in any color and size.

What you need is:
– foam chips (a 5 kg bag as you can see in one of the pictures cost 15 euro)
– blender
– water
– wood glue
– acrylic paints
– a bucket
– latex or plastic gloves
– aluminum foil

Let’s start with making the first batch. Fill the blender with foam chips and add water. Push the foam chips down below water level. (It is better to put some more water in then too little.)

Start blending. Beware to put too much foam in the blender. The cutting knife will have a hard time cutting away through the foam when there is too much to cut through in which case the blender could get overheated.

Blending the foam for a shorter period of time will give larger chunks and a longer blending time will result in a finer product. Best is to experiment in foam volume, the amount of water and blending time. Keeping track of the results will help you out to produce a constant series of clump-foliage.

Poor the water back in a cup and throw the cut up foam in a bucket. Best is to squeeze the material to get the excessive water out. It is fine when the foam is still moist when going to the next stage.

Optional:
Along with the dyeing of the foam chips you can add a certain amount of wood glue. In this case the clump-foliage will consist of larger clumps that you can tore apart once it is dry. You might find it useful so try it on one of your batches.

I use the cheapest of acrylic paints for dyeing the foam. I use a medium green color that I can shade with black or highlight yellow. Using a glove I mix the paint, glue and foam by hand. Once the coloring is consistent I spread the dyed material out over a sheet of aluminum foil. Drying over night the foliage is ready for further use.

Some other examples of the process working with a finer batch of cut up foam.