Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

I was kicking around some ideas on finishing this area at the edge of the layout and decided it is time to install some static grass.  Charlie inspired me to pick up an applicator, and this thing's been in the box for a couple of months along with some bags of 5-mm grass.  The applicator came with some bright green grass, but I picked up 3 other different colors, and I'll try using each one (I hope) tonight.

I've been doing a little research to get some tips, and it appears good-old diluted white glue is a good choice laid onto the subsurface, but for layering the grass, it looks like maybe a spray applicator might be a good idea.

I wanted to give my base layer a bit some stone features, although the plan is to cover over a lot of the stone with the wispy grasses.  Active word: plan.  Got the paintbrush out along with black, white, brown and blue paints and went to town on the available space.  When it all dried, it was time to apply the diluted glue and turn on the applicator, which I loaded up with the bright green grass to start.

   

The bright green was (as expected) way to bright and I pretty quickly switched to a grass with a good bit more brown fibers in it.  

       

Putting the grass down is fairly quick, even with the tight screen that came with my applicator.  Shaking while I had the thing energized helped expel the fibers, but shaking also meant that a lot of fibers ended up outside of the glued areas.  I guess I applied glue to a 6" x 2' section, applied the grass and repeated until finished.

I'm going to let things firm and dry up tonight before adding another layer tomorrow night.  I have heard there are some suppliers that have fibers that are duller - some of these wisps of grass look quite shiny.  For a first try, not bad.  I like the look of the rocks peaking out of the grass, that's quite typical of northeastern PA.