None of these are serious projects, or anything that was meant to be used as part of a final model. These are merely quick little projects that were done because I was bored and did not want to work on a real project, and because I wanted to try something that I had seen, or an idea that was floating around in my head; and some are merely test pieces done before I tried/applied a technique on an actual project.

Some work in principle and need further practice, refinement and experimentation, and some are failures. They are shown here merely as inspiration and ideas, and should not be interpreted as the actual final method/approach.

STONE WALL USING CORK

Several weeks back I found an old .125" thick cork drink coaster, I had seen some of the military guys using cork to represent stone walls, and I had always wanted to try this, I also wanted to play around with some small vegetation details.

The cork was cut into strips, the facing/exposed edge and sides were roughed up by passing an Xacto over them, and using my fingers. They were then glued to a foam-core backing using Yellow carpenters glue; 020" strip-wood was used as a spacer for the horizontal courses. Once the glue had dried, I did some additional passes over the surface of the "stone" using a wire pencil and my finger.

Next the surface and joints were brushed and stippled with Liquitex modeling paste (the ones I had seen used plaster for this, but I did not feel like mixing any). After drying with a hair dryer, the mortar and stone surfaces were colored using Vallejo acrylics.  This was followed by a quick application of some dark brown, grey and green Vallejo acrylics to represent the damp areas.

The small fine plant material is foam for trees from Woodland Scenics, the broad-leaf material is small pieces of dried parsley, lightly painted with Vallejo acrylics.

The wall section below is approximately 1/2" tall, and 3 inches long; and took about 1-hour to complete. 

BRICK WALL USING FOAM

I had been dying to give Don Railton's method of carving blue foam into brick walls a try.

A description of Don's method and one of his beautiful finished projects, can be seen here on the RR-Line forum;
http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21835

Being the way I am, I didn't go and read the method till I got to the paint and plaster stage, so my first steps were a bit different. Instead of using graph paper like Don, I drew the elevation/design (with each brick) in AutoCad, printed it out to scale, and then attached it to the blue foam using a low tack spray-mount. Using a straight edge and Xacto I went through and scored/cut the grout/brick lines through the paper and into the foam......this though left me with hundreds of tiny brick shaped pieces of paper that needed to be individually removed from the foam. (an interesting effect happened though in doing so, and that is that tiny, and very thin, amounts, of the blue foam surface lifted when pulling off the paper pieces, thus giving the bricks a slightly pitted surface...like old low-fire brick that has begun to erode on the surface).

Once all the lines were scored and some removal and deforming was done with tweezers and an Xacto, the entire wall was given a wash of Tamiya XF-10 "Flat Brown", drying was expedited using a blow-dryer. (The result is in the first image below).

Next the spackle was applied as per Don's method. While still damp, to tone down the plaster a bit, the entire wall was given a washes of Vallejo #821 "German WW2 Beige Camo", and Windsor & Newton Guache "Neutral Grey"... both washes were applied randomly, but primarily in downward brush strokes. Excess wash was dabbed off the surface of the bricks with a soft lint-free cotton towel & dampened brush. This process was repeated as/where needed/desired. (the second image shows the result with my 1/35 dude for scale).

We were having a discussion on the Finescale Railroader forum regarding using Strathmore paper for modeling buildings, so being bored one night I decided to try a few different quick approaches to see what the possibilities could be. The images below show and describe two different approaches/techniques; both yielded interesting and worthwhile results, and also left a lot of room for improvement.

It was interesting to try this and see if it would work....especially since my process was very haphazard

Scale on this is 1/35. The wood siding and the bricks are made of 4-ply Strathmore board.

This experiment took about 30-45 mins....so no real, finesse, thought, effort or reason was put into controlling the chipping and achieving a pre-determined effect,....this was all simply about seeing if it would work. I decided to do this one in 1/35 scale. There are numerous issues with the finished product....most notably the darkness and clarity of the underlying ink-jet printed wood grain (which is easily corrected in Photo Shop)...and then of course the weathering, fit and finish.....but I think it definitely shows that this approach is possible.

These were the steps used:

1. Print design on the cardstock.

2. Cut board strips, and burnish flat the raised lip from the cut (do that using the note in my previous post, and always change your cutting blade frequently).  Cut the stips longer than you will be needing them. [This will give you the needed space for the next step, as well as some flexibility in which part of the finished board you want to use)

3. Lay the strips parallel on a piece of matt-board (space the pieces about 1/4" or more apart).

4. Using any masking tape (I prefer the Tamiya tape or plain blue painters tape from the big box store.) tape down both ends of the strips.

5. Using a flat brush, apply a liberal coat of matte varnish to each strip (I use the Grumbacher stuff).....you don't want the varnish to pool and puddle...but you want enough to give good coverage, and so no potentially raw paper surface is left. (It's okay if the varnish gets off the strips and onto the board....as this will help seal the edges as well.)

6. Let varnish dry. (I accelerated this with a blow dryer....but be careful as varnish is flammable...and you may want to check to make sure your strips are not bonding to the board. I quick slight lifting of the strip with a razor blade or steel shim will fix this).

7. With a flat brush, apply acrylic paint. The paint was applied heavy enough to give a one coat coverage.  I used Vallejo acrylics, as I know it gives outstanding brush coverage and smoothness of finish, and is not as aggressive in bonding to the surface below as Tamiya might be.  I worked the paint a bit wet, blending and mottling a couple of colors together to try and vary the color finish (sort of like mapping the surface).  I could have taken more time and patience to do this, to get a better effect...but this was not the main point of the exercise.  You want to make sure you don't get too much and too heavy of a paint run/build-up between the edge of your strip and the board....this can easily be cleaned later when the strips are removed...but why create the issue.

8. When the paint has dried to the touch, use masking tape to "peel" the paint off the strips....basically the same way you would on wood. Some practice will be needed to get the feel for it, in regards to the amount of pressure used on the tape and such.

9. I used  a thin coat of yellow carpenters glue to apply the strips to a piece of dark grey matte-board  (why dark grey?...because on non white walls, in case you accidentally have a gap or seam somewhere, it will not show up as readily, and will appear more as “shadow” or underlying building paper.)

NOTES:

I only did 8 strips per paint session....this way the paint did not have time to fully cure before peeling...I have no idea how much it would  bond to the boards if it were left to dry for an extended period. 
One thing that also happens when peeling the paint, due to the Vallejo paints consistency/make-up, you will often get a pulled up edge on the remaining paint around the peel….I chose to simply press these back down flat with my finger…but they could be used to create a varying peel appearance/texture. 
When acrylics are applied so heavy, or “worked” on application, they can develop a slight sheen when dry . in some conditions this can be used to an advantage during weathering…but in general paint on buildings dulls down pretty darn fast, so if you get the sheen, you can eliminate it by applying a coat of Model-Master “Lusterless Matte” (I prefer it over “Dullcoat”)…..the sealer may also help to ease application of any subsequent weathering applications.

The individual boards were actually painted "wet" with several colors of Vallejo acrylics, and when dry to the touch a quick dry brushing swipe along the length of the boards to add some grain highlight/pattern. (not that much of this is apparent in the small amount that is seen through the chips....but it does allow the various chips to have some slight variation in tone and shading.

The lower boards were done using the tape method...which is difficult to control (at least without taking more time with it), and the white acrylic came of in large swaths (the nature of the acrylic), and something you with artwork...and chuck with actual directional grain have been able to avoid

On the upper boards I was finally able able to find a different method of paint removal that allows for much greater control, as well as allowing me to make the chips more directional (like yours and chucks)....following the grain of the board....as they generally would on a real structure.

To get ahead of the curve on any questions:

The wood pattern is a 1/48 4" board pattern that Russ e-mailed me....however I did not use the photo printing option, or adjust the darkness for the larger scale....so the underlying wood finish/color is my fault.

The line that you see running along the middle of the boards is a "board gap" line...because I needed to use two next to each other for 1/35, the line shows. 

The pattern was printed out on 80lb. Strathmore, on my inkjet printer.

......then I did the chipping.