I am on a bit of a terrain kick. I had some very cheap doormats from IKEA, which set me back a whopping $10 per mat. I had just cut them up and spread them around, but the colour still annoyed me. They were still too doormat coloured. So they looked like cut up doormats. I bought some different spray cans from Bunnings, one Golden Yellow and one Sandbark, plus I had some Almond left over. Then experimenting with all three got a wheaty shade that I liked. You really have no excuse to create your own inexpensive wheat fields using cheap doormats. Personally I would rather stick a fork in my eye than go to IKEA, but they do have some good sources of modelling materials.

I also made some new rough rural stone walls to line my country lanes. Super cheap source of small stones from Bunnings at around $4-5 per bag. One bag and its enough rocks for hundreds of metres of wall. I just PVA glued rocks in line on top of each other onto MDF bases. It requires a bit of patience as you need to go away and leave the layers of rocks to dry before adding a new layer. A black spray and then increasingly lighter dry brushing with grey and brown is all you need. I flocked the edges with some grassy green and hey presto. Another very cheap addition to your table. Quick and easy and no need to go spending dollars on rough stones walls. They should be rough and rural!

I made some new cobbled streets for my Normandy village. Using MDF as the base cut into 8cm x approx. 30cm pieces, I coated each one with a layer of modelling clay. Getting this as flat as possible was a mission, I think a regular rolling pin is the best idea. Then I used an excellent new purchase from Green Stuff World

This is a heavy plastic rolling pin with a cobbled texture on the outside. So all you do is roll it firmly along the modelling clay surface and it leaves a cool imprint of a cobbled street. It was so quick and easy compared to my previous method of individually carving cobblestones with my engraving tool. The pattern comes out very nicely as you can see from the detail in my photos. These rolling pins are not expensive, and I also picked up one for brickwork, which I will use on my next houses.

I wanted to add some bomb damage craters too, mainly to cover up areas where the cobbles were not so great. Circles of modelling clay glued on did the job here. Then I would dig out the hole in the road and cover it all with some fine sand and dirt. Undercoat and plenty of grey paint, plus some drybrush highlights and lots of dirty weathering powders finished it all off!

Check out the Puma armoured car cautiously picking his way through the destruction.