It's Island Time!

I've decided that it's time for me to start adding some terrain for my naval games. Instead of making my own islands to start, I purchased one of the Amera plastic ones.  They are made of vacu-formed plastic, and are hollow.  This makes them very light, but also very sturdy.  If you played with the Mattel Vac-u-Form in the early 1970s ( http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/Vac-U-Form.html ), these islands are nothing like those flimsy plastic things.

The island base is originally rectangular, but I didn't take a picture of that.
Also, shooting a white island on a white base with a white backdrop probably
wasn't a good idea.

I'd like to show you a step-by-step process of how I got to the final pictures below.  Truth is, I didn't take those pictures.  After putting some base coats on the island with spray cans (black and then brown), I slapped paint on it until it looked like an island, and I was happy with the results.

I cut away the base in the circular area because I decided I wanted the
island to have a deep water anchorage.  Shame you can't actually get ashore there.

This side doesn't look too friendly either.  Is that a volcano?

This place has nothing to offer, except fresh water (maybe).
How to reach it?

Huzzah, a beach! Now to figure out how to get to that water up there....

I made no modifications to the island itself.  I did use some Vallejo water effects to make the waterfalls and the breakers around the island.  I then covered the island water with Vallejo gloss varnish and the water around the island with a gloss gel medium that gave it some texture.

I could probably build my own islands.  They also probably wouldn't look this good and take a lot longer than the day or less that it took to paint this one.  All in all, I would say that if you need some islands, you should give Amera Plastic Mouldings a try.  Their website is:
http://www.amera.co.uk/ and they have distributors here in the US.