making conifers out of scouring pads

[Biased turkey]

You'll need:
barbecue sticks
scotchbrite scouring pads

First ( and the most important and delicate operation ) is to separate the scouring pad because it is made of 3 layers.
With your hands ( scissors gives a too regular shape ) roughly cut the layers in pieces of various diameters size.
( I use various Canadian coins as a template )

Please use a dust mask for those 2 operations.

Cut the barbecue stick ( 2.5 " is Ok for N scale ) , sharpen the tip and paint it a dark gray color.

Apply some Elmer's glue on the stick and insert the scotchbrite "disks" in decreasing diameters on it .
And voila ... your conifer is ready.

You can spray the tree with Woodland Scenics scenic cement and sprinkle some mixed turf on it.

Jacques

[Ralph]

Looks good to me Jaques! You could forest an entire hillside for not too many bucks!

Ralph

[Biased turkey]

Thanks Ralph for taking some of your valuable time to reply.
Those conifers are not exactly the kind I would put in the foreground of my layout.; I'll make several of them and group them on my small oval layout.
Of course on my 12" X 24" switching layout, foresting "an entire hill" would be quite difficult to do.

Jacques