benchwork and mountains and lakes oh my! (lame title but all i could think of)

for my base i used a 4x4 foot peice of the cheapest plywood i could find wich was big enough for what i wanted to do now but i want to have a 4x8 next time. i wanted to have a river and a stream so i figured i would get a big peice of foam, glue it on the plywood, and cut out the lake and stream. i found the cheapest foam i could find wich was styrofoam. that was a bad idea. it did not cut well and the little beads stuck to every thing.

for the mountains i used woodland scenics plaster cloth wich worked very well. all you d0 is is tape wads of newspaper in a moulntain shape, get the plastercloth wet, and plahe it on the newspaper wads.

on the parts without mountains i was going to get plaster of paris and spread that over the uncovered parts of the layout. that did not work at all so i went along with the plaster cloth for the rest