Let’s dive straight in. You will need MDF, polyfilla and sandpaper. I’m making 3 water features – 2 ponds and 1 swamp.

1. Make bases

You know what to do. What I didn’t do is take a photo of all three bases together, but you’ll see them in a second. Each of them measures 4-6″ in any direction.

2. Embankments

Grab some polyfilla on your finger and wipe it on the edges of your base, making a raised embankment all the way around the edge, about 3-5mm high. Make sure that all of the base is bordered with this embankment – the water resin will leak through the smallest gap when we apply it.

3. Swamp life

For the swamp, also put some dollops in the middle and smooth them into the base with your finger.

Don’t worry about it looking so rough now.

4. I don’t like sand… it gets everywhere…

Once the filler has fully dried, grab your sandpaper and just smooth those ridges out. Make sure you don’t sand the banks perfectly flat and ensure that there’s still a lip all the way around the piece. I grabbed one of my metal rulers (any pointy thing will do) and scraped out any filler on the inside of the ponds.

You may need to reapply some filler if you’re extra vigorous with your sanding, but that’s not a problem. Apply more, wait for it to dry, smooth it over with sandpaper again.

5. Texturing

You know how you can be writing a tutorial and forget to take a photo of textured ponds and a swamp, before you actually start painting them? Yeah…

Apply texture to the banks of the ponds, apply it to the entire surface of the swamp.

Leave to dry, move onto the next piece!