Felt Rivers for the Tabletop

    As I was setting out the troops and terrain I would bring to Ellis Con for our Snappy Nappy "Campaign in a Day" project back in November, it occurred to me that the number of rivers needed would be very large. I already planned to bring my large collection of Wizard Kraft rivers, my old Flex Terrain streams, and even the Plaster of Paris on artist board modular rivers I had made back in 1984 (seen in my Eyalu Battle Report), but I still wasn't sure it would be enough.

   I recalled that I had several sheets of blue felt that I hadn't ever used for anything; I could make almost 12 feet of rivers by cutting them up. Having just finished making my new sets of Felt Roads for the Tabletop, I figured I could apply a similar technique as a quick way to make them look a little less boring (and unnatural) than the plain felt sections.

First, the trusty Paper Cutter was brought out once again, and the 8.5 x 11" sheets cut lengthwise into 1.25" wide strips...

yielding six sections per sheet, as seen above. 

Using some thinned down Folkart "Teal" (blue-green) paint and a large artist's brush, I made broad curvy lines to suggest areas of deeper water.

Next, the same was done with thinned down Delta Ceramcoat "Timberline Green", a greenish brown color, to suggest shallows.

Finally, watered down Ceramcoat "Carribean Blue" (a light Turquoise shade) was applied with a sponge in a quasi-linear fashion to suggest surface turbulence.

The finished product; no masterpiece to be sure, but cost was negligible, total time to make the set was less than 2 hours, and  looks fairly presentable, I think!  I'll have to use them on the table with some figures to give a better idea how they work in "real" life.