A Winter Mat

A month or two ago, I decided that I wanted to make my own Winter Mat for gaming. I was not that happy with either of the Cigarbox Winter mats I had obtained and searching the internet did not reveal any other mat I thought would meet my needs.

At the same time I was doing the searching, I was like many other gamers following Wargaming with Silver Whistle's amazing terrain making. I had obtained his 1st book Setting the Scene and was keen to give it a go.

What follows is my first attempt, I am quite pleased with the result; in retrospect I might have done a few things differently. I will let some photos tell the story.

I started with a painter's canvas that I obtained at Home Depot. It was branded  Everbilt Heavy Duty Canvas Dropcloth, coming in a 9 by 12' piece. As instructed I started applying patches  of a brown acrylic chalking. These patches were then painted raw umber. I used less then 1 tube.

Once this was done and the paint was dry, I started to apply white chalking. This was done in about 1x1' sections and then I would sprinkle some Woodland Scenics snow. I found this a little tricky as it was subsequently a little difficult to make smooth transitions between new and dried sections. I probably could have done the whole thing in one go, but I was afraid the chalk would start to dry before I got the whole mat done. Once the snow was applied I followed the procedure in the book to roll in the snow and make it crinkly. I used a little less then 6 tubes of white chalk and two large containers of the Woodland Scenics snow.

Next up was to shake the mat out 24 hours later. I went in and touched up the raw patches with some more raw umber.

Here is the mat at this point.

I then started to work on the patches and the transitions. I used 2 colour mix of Woodland Scenics Flock . I then built up some of the edges with 4-Ground snow, this has a different consistency than the Woodland Scenics snow and it much whiter. I was trying to make it look like drifting snow. Somewhat successful! 

I also added a few winter or autumn tufts and then finally did a like sprinkle of the 4 -Ground snow.

Here is the final result, overall I am quite satisfied. You can see the terrain in action in this AR.  Pat is now working on a Southern Europe terrain book....something to look forward to and I still have lots of canvas!