Here’s some of the bits I picked up for modelling over the holiday season.
The amorphous white blob on the left was some “Snow” used in my local shopping centre. I will be using this to make some explosion markers. Teased out, glued onto washers and airbrushed. Also in the future I plan to make some flickering musket smoke for my British Peninsular Army.
In the middle you see some nose cones from fireworks, very popular here for New Year’s Eve. These will go in my bits box to make rockets and random scenery for my Orks.
At the bottom are the left over wires from Christmas Tree sparklers. I was looking at Daggerandbrush’s, https://daggerandbrush.wordpress.com/, rather excellent tutorial on making trees and thinking about getting some florist wire to try it out.
Come Christmas we put sparklers on the tree.

Tidying up the next day I was taking them off the tree and thought, “Umm nice pliable wire”. So these have been put to one side to be used soon.
I read Wargames Illustrated, it’s for the articles, honest! Looking at the December 2014 issue there was a photo feature on Brits versus Germans.

Now I’m a sucker for good scenery and ideas for making it, especially on the cheap. I kept returning to this image wondering what was familiar. Then it dawned on me that the crops were in fact bits of carefully trimmed artificial Christmas tree. All I had to do was keep my eyes peeled after the festive season for any discarded trees.

What turns up? And in the bins in the block where I live, so I didn’t even have to leave the building!