Make Your Own Base Texture

DIY basing material recipe that costs almost nothing—spackle, baking soda, coffee grounds, and paint. Almost identical to expensive brand name stuff.

The Budget Basing Recipe

Today we’re making our own basing material. Here’s what you need:

Spackle/Polyfiller (~$5, or cheaper in bigger tubs)
Baking soda - Lifetime supply (~$7) - everyone should have this in their hobby kit
Cheap paint - Apple Barrel works great
Coffee grounds - Dried out, cooked in the oven to kill bacteria (technically free!)

For the price of one jar of name brand stuff, you can make a ton of this.

2 parts material + 2 parts spackle + 1 part paint

Mix the different materials to get different size textures. Make sure to bust up the baking soda—it’s crazy how clumpy it gets.

I wasn’t paying attention that my spackle was pink—“goes on pink, dries white.” Doesn’t really matter since we’re adding paint anyway!

Because there’s coffee in this, it’s going to turn itself brown anyway. The coffee I used was 7-8 years old and hasn’t molded.

Added 3 tablespoons of salt and 2 tablespoons of water after mixing. The salt stops any mold from growing and adds another texture type.

Compared to AK Interactive Ground Texture diorama stuff—it’s almost exactly the same! Little bit of difference in the cracking, but pretty spot-on.

Put the hobby back into tabletop gaming and make your own stuff!