The finished product based and flocked.
You will notice that many of my miniatures currently are based but have not had any basing material added to them. This is because I have a big backlog of miniatures that I want to get painted but flocking them takes time and effort away from painting. Moreover, being a fiddly enterprise, with limited time to put into the hobby right now, I'm keen to maximised the time I do have to get things painted.
So faced with so many miniatures to get properly based and flocked, I was in need of a simple answer to my problem. I think I have found the answer. And it was so simple, I don't know why I haven't thought of it sooner.
All I did was get two packets of BUSCH red/brown dirt and one packet of crushed granite and mixed them together. These are readily available from any Hobby Train supplier. I then applied PVA glue to the base and dipped the base in my "dirt" mixture.
BUSCH red/brown sand and crushed granite base.
The "dirt" mixture drying.
The red/brown dirt gave a good soil colouration to the base. Previously I would add white sand to the base and paint this a dark brown and then drybrush a lighter colour over that. I would have to wait until the white sand dried and then do two additional paint coats (bark brown and drybrush layers). This "dirt" mixture method eliminated this process speeding up the basing time and now allows me to do a large number of bases very quickly.
The crushed granite provides an appearance of small stones at the mini's feet, breaking up the base to look more natural in appearance.
Once the "dirt" mixture is dry, I then use PVA glue to flock the base as normal. All up, this has cut my basing time down to about 1/4 what it used to be.
