Ivy and similar plants

For building:

For painting:

Contrary to other terrain elements or models, the building and painting steps are alternated.

As a preparatory step, I put the used ground coffee in the oven in order to be sure it dried off completely.

I cut some pieces of twine, folded them in half, twisted them on the folded side up to one-third, and used some PVA to keep the twisted position. Afterwards, I untwisted the strands from one end to the point where I applied the glue, put the twine on a surface, and painted it brown. Note that painting it with acrylic color and water will dissolve the PVA glue a little bit.

If might have been a better idea to paint if before, and twist the twine afterwards.

Once the ground coffee is cold and dry, I’ve put it into a container and mixed it with a light acrylic green. I’ve added, from time to time, some color, until I liked the result; if there are still some brown pieces, it’s not an issue; leaves can be brown too.

Once the twine is dry, I untwisted the strands again and glued them on the surface.

Once the twine is dried up (again), I added a darker shade of brown near the terrain, and a lighter shade of brown in the most exposed places.

I added some PVA mixed with water where I wanted the leaves to be, and put the ground green coffee over the glue.

Wait until the PVA dries up, and remove the grounded coffee by turning everything upside-down and shaking it a little bit.

Once I was happy with the final look, I added some all-in-one decoupage glue on top of the leaves, just to be sure that the piece of terrain wouldn’t lose the leaves when it touched something else. PVA glue might have been enough, but all-in-one decoupage glues also have some varnish, which makes the final result much more resistant.

Unfortunately, after adding the decoupage glue, the leaves seemed a little too plasticky.

Once everything dried up, I added some shades of darker green near the twine, and lighter green at the extremities, as younger leaves have a lighter color.

I got the idea of making the ivy plant while I was tossing some ground coffee, and thinking if I could use it for anything. You can also probably get a similar texture by using tea instead of coffe.

If you have some cheap green acrylic color, then doing the ivies as presented is extremely cheap, and I am happy with the end result, at least for terrain elements.

The biggest downside is the long waiting times; you have to wait multiple times to be sure that the glue dried.

There are a couple of things I can improve.

The first is how to place the ivy. The plants grow up, so making the twine go down does not make much sense.

The second thing is to untwist the strands more than I did, or use more twine, and put more leaves on it. It makes a much better final effect.