A quick guide showing how I built and painted my simple bamboo forest. I plan to use this for games like 'Test of Honour' and 'Ronin', but they could be used for anything, really.

The main components of this terrain piece are a 5mm sheet of cork and some cheap model bamboo stalks I purchased from Ebay. Nothing too special.

Building

1. Add dots to your cork sheet, spacing them enough to look realistic and forming an organic looking shape. I used a reference photo from Google, then eyeballed it. My self imposed rule was to place them at least 1cm from the nearest dot.
2. Cut the shape from your cork sheet using scissors or a sharp knife. Make sure the cut it as least the distance between stalks from the closest dot.
3. Flip the cut out over and shave down the edges with a sharp craft knife. The idea is to round out the edges so they finish as close to the gaming surface as possible, while still being a sturdy base.
4. Tear off some pieces of toilet paper and lay it over the top surface. Stick this tissue to the surface with some waterred down PVA glue, applied with a large brush. I did this with a mix of jabs to add texture and smoothing don the edges where it comes up.
5. While the glue is still wet, sprinkle some sand (or whatever you like to use as a basing mix) over the entire surface and leave it to dry.
6. Once dry, apply a second cost of watered down PVA glue to seal in the sand.

Painting

1. To establish the brown tone easier, I primed with Hyrax Brown .
2. Basecoat with Mournfang Brown . Don't worry about it being perfect. The bamboo will cover most of the surafce area and distract from any imperfections.
3. Drybrush heavily with Zamesi Desert .
4. With Ushabti Bone drybrush again, but a little lighter.

Final Steps

1. Flip over the base, exposing the underside with the dots. Now drill some holes that are large enough for the stalks to be placed in them.
2. Turn the base over and ensure the holes made it all the way through.
3. Put a small dot of glue on the bottom of the bamboo stalks. Insert them into the holes, then hold them steady long enough for them to stay put.

If you wanted to go the extra mile, now would be a good time to stain the bottom of the stalks. Applying a few tufts of a little static grass may be good too.