Desert Basecloth

For the Team Yankee games last month, I had purchased some curtain fabric for a basecloth that I thought would be a good deserty colour. It wasn't, as soon as it was out from under the shop lights it turned out to be shiny and gold. After the games, I put some thought into what would make a better basecloth for a desert table. The commercially available mats look amazing but are quite expensive, so I set out to see if I could make my own.

All of the examples of homemade terrain mats that I could find on the internet use a canvas drop cloth covered with a thin layer of caulk, impressed with sand then painted. I couldn't understand why caulk was used, as to me this would add a lot of weight and expense, so I decided to try gluing sand directly to my golden curtains.

Materials Used:
1.4m x 2.0m curtain fabric
2 x 250mm test pots of Resene 'Camouflage'
60mm test pots, one each of Resene 'Triple Akaroa', 'Half Stonewall', and 'Half Mountain Mist'
1 x 1.5kg bag of bird cage sand
Small amounts of flock and GF9 medium basing grit
PVA glue

With a standard house painting brush, I applied PVA to the fabric in manageably-sized sections, then sprinkled on patches of the GF9 grit followed by covering it with the budgie sand. I use budgie sand for all of my basing because I like the grain size and it's sterile. Once the glue dried, I recovered the excess sand, then repeated the process until I had the whole cloth covered. I learned quickly to avoid applying the glue in rectangular pattern, as I ended up with noticeable borders where one section of glue stopped and its neighbor started. 

I painted the mat with Resene colours that are close approximations to my desert basing colours: Vallejo Brown Violet, Khaki, Stone Grey, and Deck Tan. The entire mat was first covered with a coat of 'Camouflage' to seal in the sand. 500ml was just enough to cover the mat, with some slight dilution towards the end when it looked like I was about to run out. The basecoat was followed by progressively lighter drybrush layers of the others colours, finishing with small amounts of flock as an accent.

First coat of paint

Working through the drybrushing

Finished mat

The total cost of the project, including the fabric I started with, was about $70, half of that being the paint. I can't really answer the question of why caulk would be needed, but it may be something to do with the weight of the material - mine is quite heavy, whereas a lighter fabric may require caulk to give it a bit more substance. At this stage the mat seems to be able to handle being rolled up without the surface being damaged, but we'll see how it looks after a bit of use.