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I will be referring to this method of basing (throughout the tutorial) as PGDT, which is short for the technique's name. I will be using a 40mm round black plastic display lip base to apply my flock to. You can use any shape and/or size you like; it won't make any difference as far as how to apply it. I have chosen a thawing snow design for this base, so I have prepared the base with a layer of PVA glue and added beach sand on top of that. After the glue set, I painted the sand dark brown and then drybrushed the highlights on.

While PGDT is a relatively quick way to decorate a base, it's certainly not as easy as one might think. This method takes a certain amount of concentration and patience because it issomewhat more challenging than a typical flock application. Attention to detail is going to be key. Decorating this base should take around 20-30 minutes (from start to finish). To finish the base, we will simply need some white snow flock (and a small container), a #1 round paintbrush, PVA glue and something to recapture our unused excess material (I will be using a regular piece of printer paper folded in half).

It might sound strange to some of you, but we are going to be using a paintbrush to apply our PVA glue to the base. It helps us to pinpoint the areas we have selected the snow patches to be placed. If we didn't want patches, we could just use the GBDM technique instead. But we do want patches...at least I do...for this base. So to begin, we're going to take our prepared sand base and apply glue with our paintbrush in various locations. It really doesn't matter so much if you make mistakes; the goal here is to make the ground appear as though we have glue patches with some earth showing underneath. Our flock will take the place of the glue spots, so make sure you're happy with the placements first. Oh, and don't forget to rinse the glue out of your paintbrush.

You're going to want to place your base on the creased printer paper to begin applying the snow flock. The Skullcrafts snow flock is really good stuff, so we don't want to waste any of it. Keep your container nearby so we have a place to put the excess flock in. In fact, we should probably pour some snow flock into that container first...I guess I forgot to mention that (sorry). We're going to need that for this next step.

This stage is what I call "dusting the flock on". There are probably a hundred different ways to do this, but I usually just use my fingers. To explain, you are going to take pinches (using your finger tips) of the snow flock and hover above the base. When I say "hover", I mean literally hover your fingers above the base about eight to twelve inches. As you release small amounts from your finger tips, the flock will adhere to the glue patches. Keep at this until your base is covered entirely with the flock. Alternately, you can use a sifter, a mesh ball tea infuser, a spice shaker container, or whatever. Like I said, I usually just use my fingers.

Depending on how thick you applied the glue, I recommend allowing the glue and flock to cure for about 5-10 minutes before you tap off the excess. The closer the base is to being cured, the less likely you will be to tap off too much of the flock. If you want to let it fully cure, I'd give it at least an hour. So, we're going to turn the base upside down and tap off the excess flock on to the printer paper. Then we can gently blow off the remaining excess. You will likely end up with some of the snow flock still stuck in the crevices of the painted sand. This can be removed by using a paintbrush to sweep it clean. Do this carefully though; if the glue is even a little wet, you will end up making a mess of the base. That's basically it. The base is done. You can use drops of the Skullcrafts scenic water to various spots of the snow to give it a wet and/or melting look, but even without that, the base looks pretty good.