How to make HO scale junk piles

 Here's an easy way to make HO scale junk piles, though the method would work with any scale. First, gather up all the stray bits of plastic, wood, metal, paper, foamcore or anything else you have lying around on your workbench. This is also a great way to get some mileage out of those old sprues you saved for some reason. Chop them up into little pieces and add them to the pile.

Here's my pile ready to be transformed:

You'll need brown tempera paint and orange tempera paint. Put all your "junk" in a plastic bowl. Pour the brown paint over all the junk and stir until everything is completely coated. Drizzle some orange paint over the pile and stir some more, but you don't want it completely mixed in. Once everything is dry, you may need to drizzle a little more orange over it and stir again, depending on the look you want. Here's the same pile of junk after it's been given the tempera paint treatment:

Not bad!

You'll never throw anything away again. Just start tossing all your bits of garbage into an empty box and save up until you have enough to do another pile.