Tabletop Geeks

Cobblestone!

After the failed attempt at cobblestone on the well piece, we decided we needed a new idea. We needed something that would look like cobblestone and not just gravel.  We also decided that buying tons of Talus was not cost effective (and finding enough rocks of the right sizes and shapes was not very efficient). I found an idea posted by DarkWingDuck on Tom’s Boring Mordheim Forums for making a cobblestone stamp. This was exactly what we were looking for… it’s simple, it’s consistent, and it’s cheap. Our requirements were slightly different so we decided to come up with our own method. Rather than creating a uniform, patterned cobblestone we wanted something rough and random for our city. We decided on using actual stones to create the pattern to give it a more natural look.

The materials we used:

Super Sculpey (Also available at local crafts stores) – We bought 1 box and had plenty left over.
Clay Sculpting tools – Anything that can flatten and cut the edges for creating a square should work.
Handful of small pebbles – We found a rock we liked and smashed it into smaller pieces.
Wax paper – Foil should work just as well, just need something to place the sculpey on while working with it and for cooking it.
Acrylic Paints – Probably a black and white to be mixed for making shades of grey.

We started by taking some sculpey and making it flat on the wax paper, leaving maybe 1/2″ thickness. Then we used the sculpting tools to cut it into a rectangular shape.

Rectangular Sculpey, ready for a pattern

The next step was to take the small rocks/pebbles and gently push them into the sculpey, one at a time. We left the rocks in until the stamp was full of them.

Our pile of small rocks

Once we filled the stamp up with rocks we gently removed them all and then cooked the stamp in the oven following the instructions on the sculpey box (130C or 275F for 15 minutes).

First Stamp

Second Stamp

Once the stamps are finished cooking (and cooled off) it’s time to test them with some foam. We pressed them directly onto our blocks. One of the things that we learned pretty quickly was that it took a LOT of pressure to make a decent indentation in the foam. We are still trying to figure out a good way to make a larger indentation in the foam.

Foam piece decorated up using the cobblestone stamps

Success! … sort of. We know that the process works, but we noticed that the gaps between the stones themselves looked too large. This should be easily corrected by simply placing the rocks closer together when making the stamp. The next step was to figure out how to paint it all. I quickly tossed some brown paint on to make sure the cobblestone would still stand out some after being painted.

Testing out some painting techniques.

As you can see from the test piece, we might need to make a deeper indentation to make it look better after painting. We still have to decide on colors as well. Some ideas I’ve had are brown base with grey rocks, light grey base with dark grey rocks, or dark grey base with light grey rocks. We’ll have to test them all out to see which looks best, but that’s for another day.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under How-To, Terrain, Work In Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.