Greetings!
It’s football season, which means I don’t have a lot of painting time, but I did manage to work on some cavern tiles. I was enchanted by Dwarven Forge’s Cavern River and Lake sets, and with the release of Hirst Arts’ new cavern molds figured I could make my own.
A lot of these pictures were taken on the fly, but I think you can tell what I was doing.
I started with some black-marbled self-adhesive floor tile I picked up from Lowe’s for 88 cents each. I cut the 12 inch square tile into 4 inch square tiles.
I unpacked my recently purchased Hirst Arts molds. These run $65 or so for the pair.
I also picked up some acrylic paint from Michael’s. I got it on one of their many 40% off sales, otherwise I might have gone with cheaper craft paint.
I painted the tiles with the dark green-blue paint. Notice how the marbling gives some natural highlights in the water.
Naturally, I had a lot of casting to do. I use a super-hard dental plaster for my molds. It’s every bit as tough as resins and not as hard on molds.
Following a lot of casting and gluing I had my tiles built. I used Dwarven Forge’s sets as my model.
The river pieces needed some rocks and gravel along the edge. I put down a line of glue next to each “shoreline.”
I used sand and covered the glue and allowed these to dry completely before shaking of the excess.
I finished up making a few walls.
I painted all of the stone a dark gray.
I dry brushed the stones with successively lighter shades of paint. If I were to make more I would not go quite as light on the floor tiles. Following painting I sprayed it all with gloss and brushed even more gloss on the water.
I removed the adhesive backing from the tiles and placed felt on each tile.
Here is a set-up using some of the tiles. I built the equivalent of two sets of master maze cavern river sets and two sets of cavern lake sets.
Here’s a closer shot of some of the river tiles.
Coincidentally,
I needed an underground lake in one of my adventures. Here is a shot of that encounter.
Thanks for looking and let me know if you have any questions.
- pogre
...that's now got me thinking that I might actually have a go at a simple sewer system using a similar effect (so I guess I have you to thank/blame for that 
