This tutorial is a brief addendum to the excellent videos on the topic done by Dungeon Craft and Black Magic Craft, with a few tips and ideas.

 

I've gone through a few wire brushes, which can be used to etch a texture into foam emulating wood grain. Due to using too heavy a tool or, more likely, my ineptitude, I tended to gouge the foam. I had some braided picture wire lying around, and gave it a try. I snipped off a piece about 4 inches long, separated the braids, and bent them to form to my thumb. This homemade wire brush gives me more control over the depth and direction of the texture, which you can see in the second picture to the right. And picture wire is cheap.

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Next, when choosing the size for my tiles, I noticed that craft (popsicle) sticks with the ends snipped off are around four inches long and their width is almost exactly the height of two pieces of foam core board. In short, I cut out a bunch of four inch foam squares, glued pairs back-to-back, and glued sticks (which you may texture) around the edges, snipping off any excess. All that was left to do was texture and paint each tile, and I had a set of double-sided dungeon tiles!

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The first set below is textured à la BMC, using my new wire brush, with stone on the opposite side. I was lazy and used a stone texture roller but, in retrospect, I agree with PDM that hand-drawn stones look much better. The second set has a dirt texture, which was done with streaks of glue underneath wax paper, with a cave texture on the reverse, done with foil. I have yet to see if these latter methods hold up to wear and tear, but they look pretty cool. More importantly, I would encourage you to try any and all methods for texturing these tiles to get the look you are after.