Dollar Tree(s)

Ah, Christmas. A season of love. A season of hope. A season of miniatures terrain available at every corner store...

Over the last several years, little decorative Christmas villages and their accessories have gone from being an obscure expensive collectible from Stats to being a staple of most drug and dollar stores. One of the best bits for your buck is the tree packs available at Dollar Tree. They carry several varieties, including glitter, fake snow, and basic green. The snowy trees are redeemable, but I have been concentrating on using the basic green trees, pictured in their blister pack below:

Out of the box, you can see they are basic model railroad style bottlebrush trees with green flocking. Once you remove them from their plastic snowdrift stands, they can work for almost any season. Since their trunks are made from twisted wire, it is just a matter of "unscrewing" them to dislodge the hot glue that holds them in. No tools required!

After this they receive the standard treatment of hollowed out twig or dowel trunks, wooden discs, and sand, paint and flock to get them ready to join the rest of the forest.

So there you have it: Decent terrain on a tight budget, or at least leaving more funding for expanding the little armies.

[Editor's note: I have been a bit too long in the writing of this, and as of this week's visit, my local shop is out of said trees. Guess I should have started hoarding these earlier. There's always next year!]