Snow-Tex: Add good looking snow to your models!

Well with Space Wolves just being released and fresh in everyone's minds I thought I would review the product I use to add snow to my miniatures. The product is DecoArt's Snow-Tex. This stuff is easily found in most hobby/craft stores this time of year, but can also be easily ordered off the web all year long.

When I first purchased my Beastmen army for Fantasy I wanted to give them snow bases. I bought some of the GW snow flock and personally I couldn't stand it. It doesn't look right to me no matter how I mix it. I then bought another company's (I forget the name) snow product and while it did look cool at first, after clear coating and a few days had passed the snow began to get a yellow tone to it. I was not happy with the effect and decided to shelf my beastmen army until a later time.

Then, 2 years ago, my buddy Brandon asked me to paint his Space Wolves. He wanted snow bases and I cringed, but I was determined that I could make this work. It was the Christmas season and my wife wanted to go to Hobby Lobby to look for some decorations, while she was looking I decided to check out their paints. I was looking through the stuff when I noticed a bottle labeled Snow-Tex, the Jar was under $5.00 so I decided to buy it and give it a try.

Not only was I pleasantly surprised, but I was blown away. The stuff was already textured and had a very white appearance to it. I starting applying it to a few of the Space Wolf miniatures and the outcome was amazing. I still had my reservations, though because I had luck with the product that turned yellow, so I sprayed on a clear coat and then set the models aside for a few days. When I came back to look at them the snow was just as white as the day I painted them.

Here we are two years later when Brandon asked me to paint him some more Space Wolves in anticipation of the new codex. I asked him to send me a few that I had painted so I could make them match up. When the models got here the snow was still just as white as the day applied it to the models.

Needless to say I am sold on this product. It can be applied by brush, sponge or palette knife. It dries to a hard finish with little (if any) shrinkage from how you originally place it on the model. It can be thinned with water and can be tinted using other acrylics, so those of you who want a bluish tint for icy snow, it can easily be achieved.

This product has many other uses than just snow, you can tint the color and make it look like stucco for building walls, or it really makes a great mud when tinted or painted up with browns. I have used it to give bases some texture or small mounds and it is much cheaper than using green stuff to accomplish this.

Throught this article you can see some of the ways I used Snow-Tex on Brandon's Wolves, and below you can see how I used it to make textured rolling ground for some objective markers. I hope you find this review useful and if you decide to give Snow-Tex a try feel free to post here and let me know what you thought.