Display shelf part 3

And I am done... a quick paint job and a matt seal and I had just enough time to squeeze in the last episode of game of thrones season 3.  Total time about two hours.  It's nothing special,  but it is durable and solves the display space problem nicely.

The next one I do will be a more elaborate affair.

Display shelf part 2

Cracks where drawn in with a pencil.

The next step in the process involved making up a goop to harden, texture and color the surface.

This recipe is two parts weldbond, five parts fast drying wall filler, one part acrylic house paint (I had it mixed up to match vallejo model color german camo green).  I added a sprinkle of fine sawdust flock (noch alpine) to give texture without acting as glasspaper on the minis.

Here is the first coat- a couple will be needed.  I am tempted to add in a few cast details at this stage.  A backboard would be a good idea to stop minis falling down the back of the shelf.

A citadel Skelly vs.  Darkling Dwerg

Display shelf

I have shelf issues.  I need more space to show off figures.  I also have a heap of blue foam I cannot store.  Sometimes, solutions require putting two problems together.  Often with glue.  Lots of glue.

I had planned to do more display boards like my stonework one to make an intricate dungeon lair display that can double as shelving- but time is not my friend at the moment.  Rather than wait, a simple interim board will have to do for now.  A simple old school stone wargame style step hill will have to do.

Here, in step 1 I glued blue foam layers together with weldbond and hammered cocktail sticks in to reinforce.  Once dry, I coated the whole lot in modgepodge to seal and strengthen it.  Detailing and surfacing next.

Mushroom tool tutorial

In this daring episode our brave adventurer experiments with 'shrooms and sees pretty things.

I think the picture is pretty self explanitory- but here is how to make buckets of shrooms quickly with green stuff.

• First take a bit of plastic or wood to form the base of your mold.  Roll up some hard putty of your choice and stick it on. I used a hard 5 minute putty.  Apply vasoline to a big clay shaper and use it to form cone shaped holes.  Waggling the shaper a bit will make shallower shrooms.  You can also poke in holes for spots.

• Once dry, brush lots of vasoline on the mold.  Bend the tip of your wire a little to give a small hook.  Roll up green stuff... use more blue than yellow and mix in a little fimo to take away the stickiness. 

• Pop in a small ball and pack it in using the back end of your shaper to form a bowl.  Poke in your wire with a slight hooking motion and pull out your shroom.

• Snip the wire and insert into a holder to dry.
  
• Remember to give them a wash in soapy water before painting to remove vasoline so your paint sticks.

• If you want to put the gils in, do this after the wire is added using a razor.
  
• Bend the end of the wire and apply to your base with superglue.  Bury it in your texturing material and you, my son, are done.

  Have fun kiddies!  Remember... in the eighties all Golden Demon winners had shrooms on the base.  All of them.

Parsley, sage, flock and time

Some folk just cannot seem to understand the joy of miniatures. For them painting little figures is just so repetitive and boring.
Last night I found myself using a diamond file to sharpen thirty odd spokes in a parsley shredder. Why? To shred foam and sawdust to make fine flock scatter, of course! It's surreal moments like these you often catch yourself in whilst engaged in this hobby that the aforementioned folk miss. Some hobbyists too- if you find yourself blindly laying down cash to solve problems without looking closely at what your buying and trying to come up with cheaper ways to solve the problem.

Hence my parsley mill, now adapted with all the glee of Gomez Addams sharpening his fence, solves the problem of nil resistance my budget coffee grinder foliage maker cannot overcome- once your chunks get to a certain size, they no longer shred because there is nothing to stop them moving out of the blades path. The chunks are perfect of tree foliage and bushes but for basing you need that extra find grind to turn it to flock.

The parsley shredder came to my attention in Canberra during the 1990's when my friends introduced it as the 'Mull-o-matic'. Though the herb they where shredding was not destined for scenery, it struck me as a nifty tool. I filed it in the back of my mind.

Teenage mutant ninja turtles!

 I grabbed one this week for ten bucks. Unfortunately the blades are more like lumps if steel- so it is no good for tough materials like foam, it jammed instead if sliced unless you put in more effort than I could care for.
Not any more.
Bwa ha ha.

Diamond files.  Fun for all the family.

 
After a hood hour of filing and contemplating the unusual nature of my hobby the blades where Dexter approved sharp and the foams resistance proved futile. In a few minutes I had a Chinese take out container full of grade A fine flock.
My timing is bad though- today is big object garbage collection day so all those thrown out backpackers couches will have been collected by the government to recycle into some other generations problem.

So foam shreds into perfect flock.  Leaves, too, shred nicely- though remove the stalks or you will wreck your shredder.  The funny thing about scale is that the resulting leaf scatter, which is made from real leaf scatter, does not look rich enough.  I look out my window and see the fallen leaves that I gathered the material from, but on the base it looks nothing like it.  So, I put a few drops of sepia ink and a squidge of glycerine (to help preserve the leaves) into a shaker pot and shook up a perfect batch of forest floor scatter in no time.


MORE ON AD&D SKIRMISH

The AD&D battlesystem skirmish book from last episode has me all excited about terrain again.  All my feverish need for mounds of flock will be revealed in the Skulldred project, by the way.

Speaking of which, I fished through my collection and was pleased to find the Ral Partha stone giant and the rare Marid where in my possession. These both appear in the book and are lovely figures. I was tempted to sell the Marid, because it gets upwards of 50 pounds on eBay, but damn it's charming.
Strangely this sent me on a bit of a d&d spin. I was looking at some of the larger preprinted plastic minis by wotc last night for a good basis to repaint and convert some big classic monsters. The forums seem to think stripping them is nightmarish. May have to experiment. Some of them would be great if only they released them unpainted.
Strange business model. All the power of hasbro behind it and rather than look at the successful GW business model, they choose the prepainted plastic pokemon model and cut away a massive chunk of their market.
Imagine if they turned to making unpainted themed hard styrene dungeon packs instead? First level box of Kobolds, treasure, doors, skeletons, orcs and bugbears with swappable parts, scenario booklet and floor plans?
Instead you have to hunt down enough kobolds to... Oh wait, no... It's a githyanki... Damn, won't be able to play that scenario this week.... Hmmm, reaper do packs of five...Otherworld whole warbands...

Waste.