Static grass

I recently discovered that the Heki static grass fibres recommended by Martyn Welch and Barry Norman (and which I mentioned in a post on here quite some time ago) have either been changed recently or else I'm seeing the colours differently... I bought quite a lot of bags of the 'spring' and 'winter' varieties with the aim of blending them into a summer grass coloured mixture but it turns out that they are already a rather lurid blend of vivid greens, dark reds, yellows and whites which to my eyes looks pretty awful and no better than those horrid train-set grass mats you can buy.

The recent article in MRJ about static grass recommends the use of Woodland Scenics static grass fibres in several colours so I promptly ordered a load of it. Fortunately this time I was luckier, as the WS fibres are a single colour rather than a blend like the Heki ones which means they can be mixed as required. The colours are also far more natural looking than the Heki ones.

I had a quick go at using the static grass and puffer bottle. I tried PVA, waiting until t was tacky before applying the fibres, but either I let it go too tacky, or something because once it had dried, most of the fibres came straight off! I went out and bought some Stikatak spay adhesive (usually used for flooring) as recommended by Martyn Welch in one of the earlier MRJ articles about static grass and this seems ideal, being immediately tacky when applied but drying to a non-sticky finish. It seems to hold the fibres very firmly. Also, being an aerosol, it can be easily applied onto existing fibres to allow subsequent applications to vary the colour or thickness of the grass. I've not tried Scenic Cement or matt medium yet.