Dead simple, dirt cheap, dirt roads

I've been hankering after playing a 6mm Seven Years War game for a while but wanted to add some roads to make the table more interesting.  After scratching my head, looking online and playing about with card and paper nothing was really working. 

I then thought of using sandpaper.  A quick look in the garage and play about showed this would be too stiff and brittle.  But in the same drawer nestled the perfect thing.  I think it's wet and dry paper, it's got a fabric back with a fine sand paper textured top.   We've had it 20 years or more when we did a repair on an old car and it wasn't going to get used again.  

It took no time to cut this into 2cm width lengths with normal scissors (don't use a pair you care about)!  Then it was painting time.

First off I used the ever reliable Dulux colour matched to Vallejo Model Colour Leather Brown as the base coat as I do for the majority of my bases.  Being emulsion this takes no time to dry.  Next was an overall drybrush with Vallejo Game Colour Earth.  And finally I did a more targeted drybrush along the middle section with VMC DesertYellow.  To finish them off I painted a strip along each side with a grassy green colour Dulux emulsion that I'd had made up.

Raw to finished top to bottom

Raw to finished close up 

All in all I'm very pleased with these.  They cost next to nothing and took almost no time to make.  They look good enough for me, they'll be easy to store and as there is some flexibility to the material they well sit on the table.  I'll be looking for some more of this to make curved roads for 6mm and some for other scales and also some fields. 

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