Homemade Faux Fur Fabric Grass Mat

Rival Anglo-Saxon forces clash a grassy plain by some ancient stones.

After some careful consideration I decided that the Ashdown project required a new grass mat. The grass mats I have are produced by Citadel Miniatures and are good however they do not conjure images early medieval Wessex. Some time ago I had discovered that some wargamers make grass mats out of Faux Fur fabric. These mats look amazing and the Ashdown project appeared to be a perfect opportunity to try it out. I watched a few tutorials on Youtube and read a few blogs to learn how to make a faux fabric grass mat. The Red Beard Baron and Terrain Made Easy are the two best youtube channels for faux fur grass tutorials.

My biggest concern was sourcing the supplies I needed to make the mat, and with coronavirus spreading across the globe I felt time was short, so with a recommendation in Terrain Made Easy's tutorial, due to both of us being in the UK I ordered (with help form my wife, who knows about fabric) from a company called Fabricland, the paints I bought in town from The Works. I did not give much consideration to what I bought as words like 'social distancing' and 'lock down', were being thrown around. I am glad I bought the stuff when I did because social distancing and lock down became a thing a mere few days later. The Ashdown project had become my lockdown project.

Supplies

• Faux Fur Fabric of a suitable size and colour
• Acrylic Paints in greens, yellows and browns
• A comb
• An old electric beard/hair trimmer and attachments
• scissors
• decorators paint brush
• something to cover the floor with
• vacuum cleaner (if inside)
• dust mask

The faux fur fabric ready for a shave and a haircut

I spread the faux fur fabric out on the floor and combed the whole thing over to make sure there were no knots or anything in the material. Once this was done I began to work my way through the different size attachments, this took sometime and at regular intervals I had to comb the faux fur to get out knots and cut or loose fur. I found this process very messy and the air was full of fur fibre so I decided to wear a dust mask. This process was lengthy and took sometime to get right, but eventually I decided I was (relatively) happy with the trimming, not quite as short as I would like but I feared anymore would be too much and the mat may begin to look bald or threadbare.

combing the faux fur

Trimming the faux fur 

Checking the length using a model

Things get messy, it begins to look like I have been shaving Paddington Bear

After the shave

The next stage begins

The next phase of the process is the painting of the faux fur mat, for this I bought some paints from The Works. I got a dark green, a light green, a  yellow ochre and a lemon yellow. I selected either the dark green, light green or yellow ochre, I poured the chosen colour onto the fur fabric and used one of the decorator's brushes to spread the colour out. Once the colour was a spread out as I could get it with the brush, I usrd the comb to spread it further, brush out any knots or matting and really get the paint into the fibres. I was not too careful about the colours mixing as this gives the grass a more realistic look. I just randomly selected which colour to use in an attempt to make it look natural and completely random. This process took a while, painting and combing an area of faux fur that is over 4'x6' is rather time consuming, and wearing on the knees. Once the entire mat was painted, I put some lemon yellow on a decorators brush, wiped most of it off and basically drybrushed the fur fabric. Then I hung it up and left it for a few days

partially painted

Combing the paint in, gets the knots and matting out and blends the colours to look more natural

Finished, now for to leave it to dry

Even messier than shaving the faux fur, I literally have green fingers.

The finished mat with miniatures and terrain on, and a book underneath to create a hill

I am not sure how I feel about the outcome of it really, on one hand I am disappointed with the result, on the other hand I am rather pleased. Normally at the conclusion of a project, I feel one way or the other. In photos it looks fairly good but I feel my 'panic buying' of paints due to corvid-19, caused me to be a little rash in my colour choices. I would however give it another try at some point and maybe use brown fur fabric instead of honey fur fabric. A decent faux fur mat, I think really brings a battlefield to life and certainly some of the easiest homemade grass effect that a wargamer can make, and relatively inexpensive. 

EDIT: I have now ordered brown shorter fur and planning to get some different paints to see if I can make another faux fur fabric gaming mat.

Credits

Photography by Tzekkaz

Miniatures by Footsore Miniatures

Miniatures painted by Tzekkaz

Rocky terrain by Solid Ground Studios

Rocky terrain painted by Tzekkaz

Tree from Amazon.co.uk

Supplies sourced from:

Faux Fur Fabric from Fabricland: https://www.fabricland.co.uk/product-category/buy-fabric-online/faux-fur-fabric/

Acrylic paints from The Works: https://www.theworks.co.uk/c/art-supplies/acrylic-paints

Bibliography

The Red Beard Baron., (2017). How to Make a Realistic Wargaming Mat with Fur. YouTube [Viewed 7th April 2020] 
Available from:
https://youtu.be/tvT6Ww6JdSs

Terrain Made Easy., (2019). Realistic Tall Grass Terrain Tutorial-Faux Fur Grass. YouTube Viewed 7th April 2020]
Available from:
https://youtu.be/VIt_A0VE-BA