Everyday household items can become useful shapes in vignettes and dioramas. For instance, a series of indentations in an ice-tea bottle, when filled with spackle, becomes either a rutted road or garden furrows, depending upon the scale.

The ice-tea bottle’s caps can be filled with spackle to prevent bending, then sanded smooth and covered with modeling putty to provide a paintable surface. These can become concrete pillboxes or the tops of metallic underground storage tanks, again depending on the scale.

Right now, I’m using all of these to enhance “alien” ground cover in a forced-perspective science-fiction vignette.

Tip submitted by:
Ned Barnett
Las Vegas, Nev.