Lots of Lots

I've just put about 30 items up on Ebay, including:

• Lots of 40K blisters
• Confrontation Familliars
• Fantasy Blisters
• WarMachine/Dark Age
• Resin scenery

These are items that I've held back while the Royal Mail strike was in progress (there now seems to be a truce until the new year).

Click here to see a list of auction items.

Fixed it.....

...well, as good as. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So when I tried to amend the header graphic, I found it was stored remotely. I think this is so the template provider can get stats on usage. Anyway, I've re-directed the call to my own hosted graphic, and voila! (that's French for big violin?), the header now has a nice graphic of my Praetorian bugler.

I've photographed him at an angle and sized him bigger than the frame, to make it look like he's coming out of the screen 3-D style. I've left lots of space in the header so that I can edit in more miniatures occasionally. I just need to fix some side-bar widgets now ;-(

If it isn't broke.....

A site visitor told me the blog was a little hard on the eye as the 3 columns were very close, and there was no border or background colour to clearly differentiate them. Being the helpful person I am, I tried to make things better....and I'm still trying!

Please bare with me while I salvage the adequately functional XML template that I felt the need to b*gger about with. I've got the columns working. I just need to sort the header out and re-write some of the widgets. Until then, enjoy the 1:1 scale working model of a butterfly built by God.

Quickshade Soft tone versus Dark tone

I decided to have a dabble with the Army Painter Quickshade products. I chose "Soft Tone" and "Dark Tone" (at £18 for each!). After checking various websites for examples of miniatures painted using Quickshade, I came to the conclusion that the Soft tone would not be effective on dark colours. So I painted up 4 Empire Pike men in very bright colours as test models. Basically this went something like:

• White undercoat.
  
• yellow & green for the tunic/pants.
• brown for the pike shaft, boots, straps.
• Chain mail for the breastplate, helmets, pike point.
• Elf flesh for skin.

I used very bright Bilious Green and 2 slightly different yellows (John Inman Lemon and Freddy Mercury Sunburst I think). After this I applied Dark tone to 2 of the models and Soft tone to the other 2. I used a brush to apply the QuickShade (I'll post another article about the "dipping" method). I'll let others judge the results from the above pictures. What I learned was:

• Apply good coats of base colour as the quick shade will show up weak coverage.
• Quickshade darkens everything, so use brighter/lighter colours.
• You need to brush away excessive pools of Quickshade that form on the model.
  
• Thin Quickshade with turps or white spirit - NOT Water.

Overall I think the Dark Tone is the better shade, although the Soft Tone will take the edge off flat areas of bright colour. Dark Tone exaggerates recessed detail - not a bad thing for miniatures (especially for cartoon/Manga stuff). QuickShade is definitely good for painting up large lots of rank and file troops to gaming table standard.

Nothing for sale

I've not put anything up for sale this week due to the impending Royal Mail strike. As soon as I can work out the impact, I'll probably put some more items up. I was hoping the strike could be called off through negotiation, but it looks like both sides are set on it.

I reckon anybody striking should be charged with treason as its still the "Royal" mail;-) Everybody has the right to strike, but at a time of increasing unemployment, the strikers will find it hard to get public sympathy.

Since the implementation of letter, large letter and packet sizes for inland mail a couple of years back, there's not a lot of difference between Royal Mail and courier prices. I think we are just a year or so away from the government giving out general postal delivery licences to TNT, bundesposte, DHL etc. (Especially if the treasury can raise money from them like the G3 mobile phone licences).