Creating a base for your miniature—a fantasy monster, a military jeep, or a sci-fi space cruiser—doesn’t require expensive, specialized materials. Often, those materials can come from unexpected sources. Using found objects, recycled materials, and household items can save money and give your projects a one-of-a-kind touch.
Let’s start with your home. If you’re anything like me, you have hundreds of little-to-mid-sized items stuffed in boxes, things you looked at and thought, “I could use that someday.” If you don’t have a “junk” box, you most likely have a “junk drawer”—probably in your kitchen—where everything that doesn’t have a proper place goes to live out the rest of its life. Start there. Once you’ve combed through that drawer, it’s time to investigate the bathroom, and don’t forget the garage and workbench if you have them. Searching these few spots should yield a decent amount of “loot.”
What constitutes “loot”? Items like broken jewelry, bottle caps, buttons, and even plastic packaging can add intricate details to your bases. For example, plastic tiles I found at a thrift store became marble floors, while pieces of an oddly shaped shampoo bottle served as futuristic structures. We've all imagined re-purposing the sculpted cardboard inserts from electronic packaging.
Beyond the odd-and-ends of the household, there’s also the bounty of what nature provides. Nature offers both realism and texture for your base. Shale, bark, twigs, stones, sand, and dried grasses are all great for creating organic environments. Using real shale, for instance, brings a rugged, natural look—perfect for a Frost Giant’s icy home. Properly painted, bark can look even better than a stone as a boulder, and it’s much lighter.
Old electronics, toy parts, and random household trash can also be repurposed into amazing base designs. Consider using the back of a smoke alarm, bottle tops, or desiccant bottles to build structures. In the Defended Water Reservoir diorama, used for pictures of BattleMechs, a hot sauce cap and gears helped create an industrial feel. It takes a bit of vision to see the final product before it’s fully realized, but you’ll get there eventually.
All it takes is one initial item to set the ball rolling. Maybe it’s a bottle cap from an orange juice container that structurally resembles a balustrade. Or perhaps your Fire Giant needs stairs to stand better, so you use natural, broken shale pieces to create them. Your BattleMechs may need some alien terrain, and thorns from a tree glued onto hex bases with mud terrain and exotic colors can make for a striking alien landscape.
Blending these disparate pieces into a cohesive whole requires some careful fitting. You may need to customize the fit by cutting, melting, or sanding the materials. You can use superglue and baking soda, air-dry clay, or epoxy putty to fill any holes or cracks. Once everything is assembled, it’s just a matter of painting the pieces to ensure they look to scale. This process includes base coating, weathering, highlighting, washing, and a variety of other painting techniques. Adding small details along the way helps to unify the random pieces and give the base a cohesive, realistic appearance.
Don’t forget about online groups and hobby communities! There are entire groups, like found-item model builders on Facebook, that share creative ways to repurpose materials. Many diorama-building communities also offer interesting shortcuts and techniques to assist with basing. These communities are excellent resources for discovering new ideas. Be sure to look abroad as well—there are still forums and other platforms where hobbyists gather to share valuable information.
Building amazing miniature bases doesn’t require fancy supplies—just a creative eye and some resourcefulness. By incorporating found and repurposed items, you can craft stunning, unique bases that will set your miniatures apart from the rest. Of course, having some ballast and a few bushes on hand doesn’t hurt. 😉