Inspiration can come from many places in crafting (not the least of which is necessity). Consulting art, photographs, and the natural world can guide us to often surprising results. For instance, a while back, I purchased a pack of decorative tree bark that was on sale at my local art store, and promptly forgot about it. Then recently, as I was planning out some terrain for an adventure in the mountains, I was looking at the bark and noted how it reminded me of the shale mountainsides you can see in the Western United States and Canada: tall, fairly flat formations of overlapping stone. And I thought, with some paint...

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The first step was to build a form, which I made from some stiff but pliable card stock (you could use thin cardboard), bent into something like a third of a lampshade. I could describe this better if I'd paid more attention when we studied conic sections. Instead, here are some brief instructions. The diagrams are done with paper for visibility. The process is much easier using card stock.