1 September 2019

Tutorial: Jungle Island Felt Mat

I've become very happy with using homemade felt maps for my games. They're cheap and easy to do - check out my earlier ones here.

Now that we wanted to take up Ghost Archipelago it was time to make some new ones. Felt is obviously not as cool as a well done 3d board - but I don't have the space for something like that.

I had the idea for this a long time ago, the steåp-by-step is at the end of the article - let's start with the result.

The idea is a 3'x3' island, cut into four pieces - for a lot of possible variations. Combined with a few smaller Islands, I'll have all the Ghost Archipelago setup I want.









Water
Bought some light blue 3'x4' felt. Then I went over it with different nuances of blue spray paint (the cheap cans) and a bit of green as well. There's two blue and one green, beside the color of the felt. This one I just leave wrinkled, as it adds a nice effect. 



The Island
Take the 3'x3 piece of felt. Mark out the middle and the center of the edges. This is important, so the four pieces will line up no matter how you turn them.


Cut out a nice island shape. I had 1'x3' of extra felt, so made that into smaller islands.


First paint the island with different greens and browns. Cheap spray paint once again.


For sand I bought a bit more expensive effect paint. the on that sprays a sand stone effect. Go around the edges with brown paint first, then add a layer of effect paint. This will have to dry for quite a while.





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