Nespresso Coins

Published 6 April 2020

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I made fake coins out of used Nespresso Capsules.

I had so many of those capsules to throw away every month I figured I should be able to do something with them.

So I started opening them, throwing away the coffee still inside, cleaning them, drying them, flattening them and gluing them two by two.

My 2yo loves playing with those.

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Here they are, cleaned and drying

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Mansions of Madness Shoggoth

Published 1 April 2020

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Those mult-eyed beauties are two Shoggoths, from the Mansion of Madness game. I put them on simpler bases (made out of used Häagen-Dasz ice cream pots), so I can use them in other games.

Those were pretty simple to paint and very enjoyable as well. I decided to pick a very weird color scheme of green, pink and yellow. They are creatures of the great beyond after all, they could be any color. I mirrored the color on the two miniatures.

They are mostly painted with dry brushing. The body received two coats, a first very rough of a darker tone, and lighter brushing with a lighter tone later. The tentacles received the same treatment: dark rough first, and lighter one on the tips later. Eyes are painted yellow with a wash matching the body color (in retrospect, the green wash works better than the red one here).

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Here they are, two beauties in an aerial view on my desktop. This is right before the wash.

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Giant Bugs

Published 29 March 2020

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Giant bugs from cheap plastic toys. And a crocodile thrown in the mix as well. I think it's a Kinder toy.

I think I should have made the crocodile lighter. I'm happy with the bugs, mostly, but if I had to redo them I would use a darker version of the main color of their shell to paint the articulation instead of the bone color I used. Also, I would find another color for their claws and teeth as well, it does not work so well here.

Otherwise I like the way the shells seem to have a slight sheen.

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Here they are right before priming. I glued them to poker money markers using a glue gun. This allowed me to warp some of their limbs in place. I also applied some textured paste on the base at this stage so it would get primed as well.

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Kyra, Human Cleric

Published 28 March 2020

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This is Kyra, our Human Cleric of Sarenrae, with finally a miniature that accurately represents her with her magical glass scimitar and unmovable shield.

I stayed in my comfort zone here, but took care to keep only a limited amount of colors. Blue, gold and silver. With a touch of brass for the equipment.

I don't know how to paint glass, but I think the torch turned out ok.

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Playmobil cove

Published 15 March 2020

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I tried to make some terrain pieces out of playmobil parts. Mostly just apply modeling paste on top to give them some texture and repainting them. I plan to use them in my mega dungeon game, where my players are exploring a swamp full of forgotten barrows.

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Here is the toy when I bought it. I knew I could paint the rocks in a convincing fashion using some modeling paste to give some texture, because I had done it before.

What to do with the dune and the water, though, I wasn't sure.

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Here is the other piece of terrain. Could work as a small barrow as well. The holes are meant to be used to fit trees, and I intend to convert some playmobil trees as well. What I'm concerned about with this hill is in terms of gameplay; if there is enough room to make miniatures fit on it...

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And a patch of sand... I thought I could maybe paint that as a small pond. I have no experience with painting water, so it could be a way to try.

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Here they are, textured, waiting for the paste to dry.

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This is the current state of the pond. Does not look better in reality than what you can see on the picture. I plan on testing a water effect on it, and adding some grass around it.

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Yearly mini sorting

Published 27 February 2020

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I realized I start to have too many miniatures. As I've been painting regularly for the past year, I can see the progress I made from earlier.

Many of them were very quick attempts at building a large collection quickly using barely two colors and a dip in wood varnish. When I compare those minis to what I do today, the difference is huge. And I don't want to put badly painted minis on the board when I have better looking ones, so I started to put the very bad ones into boxes and store them.

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Houses from Toys

Published 22 February 2020

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I bought some cheap toy house to see if I could make them look better with a cheap paint job.

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Above are the three houses when I bought them. They were about 1€ each (the small one was for free).

Overview

I knew they would not be the right scale for my miniatures, but I wanted to see if I could make them look good with a quick paint job using cheap paints. I'd rather practice on cheap toys like this first.

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Closer look on the Hello Kitty one. Lots of details on the porch, but unfortunately not a the right scale.

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And the other one. Way less details here.

Closing windows

First thing to do is to close all the windows. I had a bunch of plastic poker money counter lying around so I glued them across all windows.

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For smaller windows I used some plastic.

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I also added two bottle caps on the tower on the right to hide the plastic bit jutting from it, and hoping to turn it into a chimney.

I should have spend more time adjusting it so it sits in the center, though. I should also have removed the handle but I didn't have the right tool to cut that, and it was just for practice anyway.

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Same job went for the Hello Kitty one, blocking the windows.

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This was actually harder as the space is much tighter here. Also, gluing thick plastic like I did wasn't a good idea, I should have used thin plastic everywhere, it would have been easier to glue. Lesson learned.

Priming

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With all windows blocked, ready for priming on a beautiful sunny day.

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For the small one, I simply added a Sigmar sign on top, and some chopsticks on the side.

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For this one, I also added some wooden coffee stirrer on the door to make it look like a wooden door.

Painting

I don't have pictures of the painting process, but here is what I did.

After priming black, I dry brushed a brown on the wooden walls with a very large make up brush. Because the brush was so large, I couldn't get into the angled recesses which gave the houses a dark look.

I did something similar with the roofs, metal unis and stone walls. Then, I picked a smaller brush and dry brushed green on any greenery.

And that's it.

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Gormiti Demon Tower

Published 22 February 2020

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This is the original toy I bought. There is some mecanism inside that make it change height when you press it.

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First step was to open it and deactivate the mechanism, then glue all the parts together so it would stay in the most elevated position.

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Were I to repaint it again, I think I would try something more daring and attemps some lava effect in the cracks of the wall and a fire effect in the eyes of the metallic face. In its current state it looks too much like a stone structure while I could have it be a more prominent piece.

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Shadow Elementals

Published 20 February 2020

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Here are shadow elementals made out of various fire-themed HeroClix miniatures. I intend to use them whenever my players set foot in the Shadow Plane in my current campaign.

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Here are the original miniatures. I tried to grab everything I had that had some flames on it.

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This is the first test. After a black priming I tried a pruple dry brushing on the flames, followed by a lighter blue one. I fixed any mistakes with black, and applied some light gray drybrush to make the edges pop a bit more.

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The test miniature worked great, so I started working on dry brushing all the others with purple. As you can see, I was pretty rough in my attempts and a lot went on the torsos as well. That's ok, I'll clean that later.

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And with blue added. Once again, only a dry brush.

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Noble Family NPCs

Published 20 February 2020

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Here are some of the prominent noble NPCs in my current Ptolus-inspired campaign.

Seeing this picture made me realize that I should cleanup the bases a bit, like painting a clear black rim around them, not letting the drybrush show.

I rummaged through my box of HeroClix miniatures to find some specific ones that could represent some of the important NPCs of my current campaign.

My PCs are in a capital city, with intrigues from the major families (inspired by Ptolus).

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Wilson Fisk is supposed to represent Drake Scarnetti, the local Kingpin (as fits his mini).

Doctor Doom is Zander Madlaav, a warrior that seems to never age and apparently was already here when the city was founded.

The guy in a wheelchair is Ethram Waldemar, richest guy in town. His wheelchair should actually be magically flying, but I couldn't find a mini for that.

The black one is Lord Dedric Boroi, head of a family heavily involved with trade with the Shadow plane. The Skeleton one is his alter-ego there.

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