Support your local blogger - 18charlie.com

Back when I was looking at creating some transparent walls for my Tyranid Skyshield Landing Pad there was one website that was providing most of the inspiration for how I could achieve my goal. Sadly, I was not as adventurous as www.18charlie.com and in the end I stuck to what I was comfortable with - air drying clay. It's clear that 'VetSgt' and his son 'SirWitty', the driving forces behind the site are the sort of folk who enjoyed melting stuff as kids. Probably burnt through a lot of toxic plastic fumes to get to the level of confidence now to create some truly unique terrain pieces.

I first saw VetSgt work on terragenesis where his alien plants created from melted plastic spoons and then painted really showed a new way to populate your battlefield for not very much cash outlay. http://18charlie.com/2013/11/23/gelatinous-alien-plants-part-one/

Additionally, he then started working with silk flowers which showed another cheap but highly creative way of populating your battlefield with amazing results. gone are those drab gothic ruins, instead a verdant alien jungle that is alive with possibilities and endless variety.
http://18charlie.com/category/scratch-built-terrain/area-terrain/vegetation/petal-forests/

Yet more uses of clear plastic resulted in the ever popular 'crystal fields' but VetSgt took their creation to the next level and the greta thing is all the experimentation and WIPs are recorded and explained so you too can create these effective, but more importantly cheap pieces of terrain.

http://18charlie.com/making-a-large-tower-part-one/

There are even some amazingly effective Tau apartment buildings for those with access to wood working tools. You need a bit of confidence working with more heavy duty 'crafting' tools but the results speak for themselves. Latest updates show they're dabbling in the world of 3D printing which may be out of the league of most people but with these guys experimenting now, hopefully when 3D printing becomes available to almost anyone we'll once again be able to learn from their experiments.

So, go take a gander at www.18charlie.com and see what there is that you can add to your own battlefields.

 

Incidentally I've not forgotten some of the additional requests to be included in Support your local blogger, I promise I will get round to them all, there's no order so don't feel slighted if it's later rather than sooner.