How to make a good stone base

As I am a high elf player I bought  the new Mage plastic box and for the mage on foot I used the sort of vortex magical wave thingy so I was left with the stones so what I did was I cut each stone from and an other and I positioned and stuck them to a base. I then took a skull from my old dark elf regiment and put some sand on the base. Now I basecoated it with black. Then I painted the stones scorched brow, drybrushed the sand with  scorched brown and painted the skull with bestial brown. After that I drybrushed the stones with codex grey followed by fortress grey. The sand was then drybrushed with Bestail Brown. The skull was then highlighted with bleached bone and skull white. The last touch was the static grass which was drybrushed with Iyaden Darksun.