Snow Base - Help Needed

Good evening SJC, as long as the carpet is not glued down I would take the carpet off and paint the board white.

If you  have any ideas for a road or sidewalks or something like that you may want to leave these areas unpainted and paint them later or just paint everything white and then paint these items back in.

Any cheap flat interior white house paint will work. I would put a couple coats on just to get good coverage.

Once you get the board painted white you can use some foam pieces and use them to simulate snow piles and then cover them with snow.

I use the fine snow found at craft stores that is very fine or you could use Woodland Scenics snow in a shaker bottle.

This type of snow might be hard to come by due to the fact the Christmas Season is over as far as the craft stores are concerned.

I usually lay down the first coating of snow and then lightly spray this first coating with Matte Medium and then add another coating of snow.

It's pretty hard to get all the snow glued down since it is really fine

The Woodland Scenics snow in a shaker bottle can be found any store that sells Woodland Scenics Products.

Good luck, have fun !!!!!!!!!

I've never tried this but if you are adventurous and like the texture of your carpet and not the color, you could try to paint it.  Check youtube of course.  My only experience with painted carpet is buying a used vehicle where a banker had been in a collision and a dye pack went off.  The dealer "painted" the carpet.  Still looks good 15 years later.  YMMV.

Gents - my apologies for not getting back here sooner. Appreciate you taking the time to reply and add photos. Mark - really like your "Main Street". Looks great!

I yanked the carpet out. I just didn't like it. The color was OK, not a perfect match to the rest of the layout but was "tolerable" for me but it was flaking and just didn't really look "right"! 

I painted the plywood white. I ordered a bunch of stuff from one of the websites that I buy my Dept. 56 stuff from - small potted poinsettias, Christmas trees and details. I think it will look much better. I will have to grab one of the MTH Christmas/Santa figure packs as well. Here is a photo as it currently...

Looks 100% better SJC, add a few details , bushes, hedges etc around the houses a sidewalk maybe in the front of the houses between the the front porch and the trolly line with maybe a fence between the trolly line and the sidewalk.

Whatever you decide it will turn out nicely !!!!!!

Peanut's gang looks to be enjoying themselves !!!

Have fun !!!!!!

Dear Mark Strittmatter, I like the pics of your layout.  can u tell me where did u get, or how did u make the trees in your layout?  I would like to add some trees to my layout.  My layout is set in the late fall early winter time of year and I just started looking for some trees without leaves at the local hobby stores without any success.  I see your layout is one of the few wintry ones i've seen.

thanks in advance

Good morning POOLIO, most of the trees on my layout I made from bush branche's from outside.

I live in PA and we have a honeysuckle bush that works real well for making trees.

To make some larger trees I put a few smaller branch together and used brown floral tape to hold them together at the lower portion of the tree or the trunk.

I use Woodland Scenics flex paste and place it in the trees where snow would normally lay.

I have also used Woodland Scenics Water Effects and coated the trees branch's to simulate ice on the trees. I thought this would turn out better than it did, you have to look at the trees hard to see the ice.

A little bit of paint to disguise the floral tape and trim the top of the tree to what you want.

I have also used some of Woodland scenics tree amateurs for trees but they look good for short trees than they do for the taller ones. You can add a few smaller pine trees here and there and if they don't have snow on them just add some with the Flex Paste.

Just remember there is no such thing as a perfect tree !!!!!!