Flames of War Pershings

With my summer holiday over it's time to be more active in the hobby field again. A month away from work was definitely needed as I was really starting to feel fairly burnt out and frustrated about everything. Couple of weeks in Canada and a few weeks back home spending time with friends, going out, watching movies etc. really did a lot to help bring back some long lost motivation for work, and for painting as well. I've been back to work and a normal routine for about a week now and painting has actually been really enjoyable for the first time in a long while.

First up are some more additions to my Flames of War US forces in the form of a Pershing platoon. A late war entry these didn't really reach troops until the final months of the war and even then only in small numbers. Still it's an iconic tank that saw much use in Korea and formed the basis of further US armor development into the Patton series, so I had to have some. From gaming point of view these are pretty bad to be honest. They are very expensive points wise in Flames of War, but still pretty vulnerable to larger late war AT guns. Fielding more than 3 is nigh impossible and they aren't too survivable then.  Still fun to field every once in a while for a themed list.

These guys were nearly done before I left for Canada, but with the mud effects taking hours to dry they weren't quite finished in time for that. Still it was a good way to start getting back to painting by just slopping on some finishing touches and varnish to get these guys ready.

I followed my normal recipe for US vehicles with a suitable green basecoat with dark yellow modulation. Some chipping and enamel washes for weathering followed by liberal coats of mud. Still haven't really fully figured out the Ammo of Mig mud products that I've started to transition to. They feel a bit too liquid to me and don't really have much texture so building thick coats of mud seems tricky. They've nowadays come out with some thicker stuff as well, so might have to give it a try or then try to mix in some very fine sand to add more texture and grit to the ones I already have.

Aside from the Pershings I've finally received my Skaven Blood Bowl team from a Willy Miniatures Kickstarter and been putting them together. I'd opted for a Deluxe box which included a pitch and transportation foam. After some mishaps those who did so ended up receiving their stuff about three months after everyone else. If I'd known before hand I would have just taken the minis, but originally everything was supposed to ship at the same time.

Alongside Skaven I've been continuing on the next Chaos Space Marine squad. Most of the time consuming work is finished with all the details picked out and the tedious edge highlighting done. I've still got decals to apply and chipping to add before a final panel line wash to make those pop out better. I probably should have gone for a slightly faster scheme to paint, but I do enjoy the look so maybe it's worth the extra time. Hoping to finish them of within a week or so, though a friends wedding this weekend will reduce available hobby time quite a bit.

From a hobby point of view it's forming up to be quite a busy autumn. We have a Flames of War escalation league starting to get new players in and for us older players to start new armies. Also a Shadow Wars Armageddon campaign starting which I was planning to take part in. And finally we are planning to start our 1813 Napoleonics campaign that we'd originally already planned for 2016. So there should be plenty of gaming and painting ahead and hopefully I'll be a bit more active updating the blog as well.

Looking for my painting mojo

As is probably apparent from the silence in my blog I haven't really been interested in doing any painting for a while. My rush to the finish line in the painting challenge was bit of a dud with plenty of things on the table, but I just couldn't get anything finished up. Those have now been pushed aside to wait for some inspiration to finish them at some point.

Lack of painting mojo isn't anything new though as frankly I haven't really felt super interested in painting anything since last summer or autumn. I have periods where it's fun to paint up things, but I just can't bring myself to crank out unit after unit of minis in similar garb. At times painting yet another Napoleonic unit or some more WW2 stuff seems too much like a job. This does tend to cause some issues as the games I like the most tend to require quite a lot of minis with an average Napoleonic division coming at around 200-300 15mm minis in our games for example.

Interestingly the thing I'm disliking the most at the moment is painting with a brush. Airbrushing is still ton's of fun, but somehow when I need to go in and pick out details to finalize stuff all motivation goes out the door.

Even though I can't get myself painting, it doesn't mean I've abandoned other aspects of the hobby. I've actually been playing quite a lot lately with version 4 of Flames of War being a ton of fun despite some of the oddities and rules that I disagree with. The old edition and lists were starting to be boring and this really brings a fresh way to play the game without making it too different from the previous editions. Dropfleet has also been fun to play as well as all the different board games that I've gone back to.

So with a plenty of gaming and other activities I'm slowly trying to find my painting mojo again. One thing that I'm not going to do is trying to force myself into painting any larger projects for a while as that's really killed my interest in brushwork. I'm only painting whatever seems cool at the moment and not stressing about even getting it finished. Last weekend was quite fun with some airbrush work on additions to my Dropfleet army as well as on a Chaos Rhino that I'd built up last summer and started on by airbrushing a base layer of different rust shades. I tested a some chipping products from Ammo of Mig that allow you to paint over a previous layer and by wetting it again you can scratch of some of the top layers. Worked out quite nicely and now the Rhino is waiting for some detail and decal work before I can get to washes.

My mancave has also got a bit more furniture and it's starting to look more like what I want it to be. Another desk was bought for the PC so that I don't have to cram everything onto one desk. Some storage solutions for books etc. were also added which aren't really visible in the picture. Finally I bought some more paint racks from Warbases as well as new paint from a  newish brand called Warcolours. Haven't had time to test them out properly yet, but from the test pieces I did they really seem very promising! Not ideal for historicals, but strong vibrant colours and a nice 5 shade colour setup that should prove great for fantasy and scifi stuff.

With that rant out of the way  I'm off to celebrate easter. My parents are visiting Finland for a week so some time will be sent with them as well as the in-laws. Nice to have a four day weekend after a few weeks of working 10-12 hour days.

State of the paint desk

Well it's been quite a busy 2017 until now. We had friends over on New Years eve and the aftermath had a considerable impact on my painting efficiency on the next day. Somehow finding a good painting mojo seems a lot more difficult when your head feels like someone is banging at it with a hammer :) My holiday is also over and work has been busy with slightly longer hours trying to catch up on tasks left undone over the holiday period.

I was trying to finish an Orc Blood Bowl team in time for my thursday slot at the painting challenge, but it was not to be. There was just so much detail and loads of hard to reach places with the snap-fit minis that picking everything out and cleaning mistakes where my brush had touched something that was already finished that I wasn't able to get them done. They are nearly done now, I just need to do highlights on the armour pieces and paint logos on them. I decided to give up late on thursday and instead started on my entry for the Armour. I have just managed to get that one done in time and it should go up with the rest sometime tomorrow.

With this done it's time for bed. We have another Over the Hills game tomorrow to test out the rules further. And after that it's a little over a week until we get the keys to our new apartment and can start renovations. Should be a busy month ahead of me. Unfortunately I will mostly be painting walls and not miniatures then, but with the new place I have dedicated hobby room and enough space for a gaming table as well!

Starting with Dropfleet Commander

The wait is finally starting to be over with Dropfleet! With a wildly successful Kickstarter roughly a year ago Hawk launched their new game in the Dropzone universe. With over 600 thousand pounds pledged and multiple new designs added as stretch goals I wasn't too surprised when they didn't make the original June/July goal. And with deliveries starting in October it was still quite well on time by Kickstarter standards. (I'm still waiting for nearly all of my Winter War Kickstarter minis from 2013...)

I actually haven't gotten my pledge yet, and none have been hitting Finland as far as I know. But I couldn't resist when I saw some starter fleets on sale in hobby stores in the UK. Coupled with free shipping offers it didn't take long for me to order two boxes to get started with PHR. When filling the pledge manager I had planned to do UCM and PHR fleets and start with UCM and only taking one PHR fleet. But with time passing and seeing plenty of painted PHR fleets around the web I decided that I want to make that my main fleet. With one starter box not being enough for a full game I ordered two more which should give me a good start and after the pledge arrives with the final third box and freebies I should have enough for larger 2000 point games as well.

The first thing that struck me when I got the boxes was how big the ships were. I'd seen them live at Salute, but in a display cabinet without anything to compare the sizes to I just hadn't realized that these things are huge. The heavier cruisers coming at around 13 centimeters long and even the small frigates being double the size of your regular Space Marine. They did take quite a while to put together, but after a few evenings and today morning I'm now a happy owner of a sizable fleet.

Alongside building them I've used a couple of ships as test beds for paint schemes. I'd originally planned to do them with a digital camo or hex camo scheme, but after some tests I'm not that sure anymore. The ships have large nice flat surfaces and I'm really starting to think that maybe just a flat shade with some slight modulation towards the ends of the ship is the way to go. I'm starting to settle on a blue shade, but still not completely sold on it. It's probably going to need one or more tests still to settle on something that I'm happy with, but I think I'm getting pretty close.

On another note Blood Bowl seems to be on preorder! It seems like Christmas is coming early with Dropfleet coming in and now Blood Bowl. It's bit of a shame that they are not selling the rulebook and orc teams separately as I'm not that interested in the human team as it's a bit dull in my opinion. I'm trying to resist the urge to buy the starter box and wait for a separate rulebook and then just buy the Skaven and Orc team separately when they come out, but I'm fearing that I might budge with promo images popping up around my Facebook and blogger feeds.

Progress on Detroit's Finest

It's been quite a hectic week at work, but I've still managed to squeeze in a good few hours of painting time getting my tank line rolling and almost out of the factory doors.

All detail is now painted up, tons of decals have been applied and weathering done. I tried some new mud effects from Ammo of Mig on these guys. Still not sure if I prefer these over the Marutechnics ones I've used previously or not. As they are enamel based the drying time can take hours and I'm waiting to see if they change shade or consistency at all. I've liked ones with more granularity before and these seemed to be more of a thick wash consistency. I have a feeling they might benefit from the addition of fine sand or plaster to build up thicker mud layers.

Unfortunately I won't be getting them finished with a varnish layer soon as the mud effects have now been drying for a good few hours and are still wet to the touch. I have an early start tomorrow morning to report for a week of retraining in the military so no hobby time until I return from there. The weather is looking suitable for field exercises with rainfall and +2 degrees being promised by the weatherman. Would be fun to be able to go during summertime for once, but  somehow I always seem to get ordered back during November...

Back in business

With Christmas and New Year over it's time to finally get back to painting. Quite a busy holiday season this year around as I had to be at the office before New Year as well. So the few off days included much driving, visiting relatives and a pretty decent final hunting trip of the year which saw us finally get the two final moose that were part of our quota.

Not much in the shape of hobby related presents as I didn't get myself anything this year. Luckily there was Secret Santa and I got a Bolt Action British Commando Mortar team for my collection. I'm not sure if I should paint it up as an airborne mortar team instead as the uniform is quite the same as the airborne had or if I should stick to the Commandos. It would be the perfect excuse to start up another army though :) We'll see!

Painting wise I've had a bit over a week long break since the start of the challenge and only found a bit of time last friday and sunday. A small unit this time with only 8 cavalry for the Saxons. Painting is done now with basing coming up when the super glue around their bases has completely dried. Not sure what I'm going to paint next as I realized I haven't prepared anything else. I have a few Flames of War tanks prepped, but they need an undercoat from a spray can to last the weathering. However the weather here took a rapid turn towards the icy hell that Finland can sometimes be with -20 degrees Celsius outside (and colder in store) which pretty much rules spray cans out of the question until the weather warms up at least a little bit. So I guess it's prepping time for the next few days then to get something ready that can be primed with an airbrush.

Autumn Flames of War project

I'm getting back in gear after my late spring Napoleonic push and all the Flames of War hassle due to the European Team Championship. I'm not straying far though as the preparations for next years ETC are already starting. The chosen period is Mid War this time and I'm planning to build up an Armored Rifle Company as mech players are always a bit harder to find and I already had most of the stuff needed available as I'd been planning to build up the same company, but for Late War.

In addition to the ETC prep for next year we are running an escalation league for Flames of War at my club starting from 500 points and increasing the list sizes every two weeks until we end up at full-fledged tournament list sizes. The chosen era is Late War, but luckily most of the stuff overlaps with Mid War US equipment anyways. I will be building a Tank Destroyer Company to utilize my Hellcats that I normally have in support of my Paras.

To plan my painting efforts a bit better I put together a little excel sheet to track my progress. I'll first build up the Late War Tank Destroyer list and then add the few extra units that are needed for Mid War. Most is already bought. The only things I really need are the M10's, some command miniatures and a few Jeeps. I'm still contemplating about painting up dismounted mortars and heavy machine guns. They will be useless most of the time, but then again if I skip them I'm sure to need them.

Painting is well underway with the Stuart's and the M20's almost finished. I only need to wait for the enamel to dry and then add some mud and they are done. While they are drying I've already gotten started on all the infantry stands of one Armored Rifle Platoon. 15 stands and 5 half-tracks per platoon are quite time consuming, but I guess batch painting should do the trick.

Showing signs of life

Whoah it's been quite a while since the last update. I guess now is the time to blame the usual suspects such as real life and work, but to be honest it's also partly because I haven't really felt like blogging. Though I have been following other peoples blogs constantly, updating mine hasn't really been on top of my priorities. 

I'm not sure if I should just continue with the blog like I've done before mainly posting pics of things I've painted or actually try to post something more "useful". I think my main issue I have with just posting painted stuff is that you rarely if ever get any real feedback that you could use to maybe improve yourself and your painting. I'm not innocent of this either as to be honest mostly when I write comments on other peoples blogs I do tend to stick to the usual praising phrases even if I at least try to come up with some remark about some nice little conversion or something especially good with the paint job. The same issue is with forums as well with little real conversation to be had and mostly just more or less meaningless comments with "Great paintjob!" being pretty much as prosaic as it gets.

Still just posting pics does give myself some sort of a log of what I've been doing in the past and hopefully see some progress in painting skills along the way. But outside of that I feel like I should try come up with something else to post so that the blog would have a purpose. I'm just not really sure what that should be. Better written AARs with maps etc. might be a good way to go, or writing down some of the scenarios that I've been playing or running. Or writing some more tutorials or product reviews could be the way to go. Well I guess I'll have to try figure something out

On another note I haven't been really been idle in my hobby pursuits finishing 13 battalions of Swiss and Croat troops in the last two months as well as getting quite a few games played. I haven't really gotten around to taking pictures of these, but will probably have to do that sometime in the future.

With the majority of my Russia 1812 miniature project done I needed to do something completely different so I've been building up one of the 4Ground buildings that a clubmate had bought for our club. Excellent stuff and they've really improved their buildings and have some clever ways of hiding the joints. They do look very nice, but are extremely time consuming to build as all the doors etc. are working. It took me about three evenings to build up with about 6 hours of work put in along the way.

My ETC tournament list has also seen some changes so I needed a couple of more miniatures done. A few more EW tanks in the form of PzIIc's and two Char B1 Flammenwerfers put into better use after the capitulation of France. The B1's will probably not see much use as they are too slow compared to everything else, but as I already had them I thought I might as well paint them up as dark grey panzers are breeze to do. Though they do tend to cause the same effect as King Tigers in Late War with people really putting too much effort into destroying them compared to the threat that they actually pose. The PzIIc's on the otherhand will be a major component in the list as in the end I wanted a fast hard hitting force instead of a more static line with larger firepower. Funny enough the one I'm going with now is very close to the first draft I had. Should have just stuck with that before listening to too much advice :)

Painting progress on the Russia 1812 campaign

I've been a bit quiet here on the blog in the last week or so. Still it doesn't mean that there hasn't been anything hobby related going on. I've played a few games with my EW Germans losing both, but learning quite a few valuable lessons. I've also managed to get started with the French 9th Division for our Russian campaign. I need to have everything painted up in the end of May with the first battle of Polotsk being played then, so 2 months time to finish 13 battalions.

I've got the 3rd Provincional Croatian Regiment all painted up, but still missing basing and their flags. Pictured here is the 2nd battalion all done and glued on their bases.

I'm leaving for our summer cottage for easter holidays and after some negotiation I managed to sneak in some painting equipment as well. I've prepped up the 4th Swiss Regiment that was in the same brigade with the Croats. So 3 battalions of Swiss and the brigade commander with his aide. These are slightly smaller with only 18 men per battalion instead of the 24 that I had on the Croats. We only use 18 in our 15mm games, but in my opinion 24 look better when in march column so I have an extra base for that. After the Croats I decided to be smart and only paint the extra base when all the 13 battalions are finished.

During prep I also learned a valuable lesson in airbrushing again. Check what's behind even if it's not directly in the line of paint. With the brush sometimes pointing somewhere else than the table there can be some misplaced spray. This time my paintbrush rack was conveniently close. Luckily it was only the bottom parts of the brushes that got some overspray. At least now I will instantly recognize my brushes if I ever go to the club to paint something :)

But with that I wish everyone a Happy Easter! Even for a godless heathen like me it does give a much needed break from work with the few extra free days that we have here. So no rest for my brush arm as there's plenty of time for painting :)

All done... or not

I've been happily working on the looted Universal Carrier doing all the weathering over the last couple of days. All the time I had a nagging feeling in my head that there's something I've forgotten, but going through the model multiple times I found no unpainted spots. Well now I've got all the weathering effects done and I was just going to apply a final coat of matt varnish when it hit me. I had forgotten the bloody decals!!

I had planned on putting massive Balkan Crosses around the tiny tank as recognition for friendlies, but now they seem to be rolling out all camouflaged. Oh well a few steps back as I now have to apply decals, another coat of gloss varnish, do weathering over the decalled areas and then varnish everything again... Just as I was happy that I finished something in only a few days and then I have to go back and redo stuff. And it will take some time too as the enamel washes take 4-5 hours to dry before anything can be added on top...

Being annoyed at my mistake I decided to work on something completely different. I've had this 80s Citadel Chaos Toilet sitting on my desk for quite a while now waiting for some excuse to paint it up. I've skipped most of the themed challenges until now, but this was too good to skip as it should be a quick paint job and I reckon a chaotic man eating toilet suits the Comedy section quite nicely.

Santa's gifts are on the table

A week or so back I finally finished building up my Secret Santa gift of a Universal Carrier and conversion bits to turn it into a German looted PaK36 carrier. I had originally planned to do rivets with plastic rod, but I was unable to find any of the right size at my local stores. So I finally I abandoned that and went with Tamiya Plastic Putty drops that were shaped into something that remotely looked like rivets or bolts. Finally some additional gear from my various German left over sprues. I've now finished most of the basic paintjob. Still some stowage to finish before applying a gloss coat and starting the fun part that is weathering and muddying the tiny vehicle.

As is usual with my hobby workflow I'm unable to just stick to one project. The 15mm German project is going forward as well with 4 Anti-air halftracks based and the first paint layers and drybrushes applied. I've also started on 2 objective markers for the army. And finally there's a Sarissa Chateau that will be needed for my clubs Bolt Action game day where I'm hosting a Commando inspired scenario. I've also got a squad of Wehrmacht soldiers standing guard and some Feldgendarmerie lined up and waiting for a basecoat.

The Chateau is mostly finished and now I'm just adding extra detail in the form of Warbases roof tiles. Half of the roof is done, but still left to do is the most time consuming side with 3 windows that will require quite a bit of cutting and trying to match up all the rows of roof tiling. Extremely time consuming, but it really makes the building look much more realistic compared to the totally 2D roof tiles on the normal MDF roof.

Painting and tournament preparation

I'm back painting after a small hiatus due to the addition of a new furry member to our family. Jekku is a Novascotian duck tolling retriever who will hopefully someday become my hunting companion on duck and grouse hunts. It's still a long way off and currently he just concentrates on sleeping and mischief like most puppies do. At the moment his living up to his name which is prank or trick in finnish, but it's also the shortened slang name for the lovely German drink Jägermeister. Hopefully he'll transition to the latter when he grows older :) No big disasters yet, but he did already manage to open one cabinet where I kept prepped minis, luckily I got there in time to save the minis from a horrible death and the little dog from some epic stomach cramps.

I did finish the Middle Guard last week already, but forgot to post them to the challenge... So they will be coming out this Friday. In addition to them I actually have a second entry lined up in the form of a Flames of War objective marker! I'll be participating in a tournament this weekend and decided I don't want to use the plastic markers I have so I quickly painted up this marker to accompany the one I already finished earlier. At the moment the wash is drying, but when that is done it's time for a  varnish and some static grass to finish it off. I also started on some remaining Early War Germans with two AT gun platoons and an IG platoon. In preparation for the tournament I've also been fixing a few models that have taken some abuse from falling etc. Pretty darn annoying stuff as it's really hard to match the paint shade when covering up areas that have been glued back together.

I'm already slacking on my New Years plan of not buying more than I paint as we organized a group order to Perry Miniatures at my club. They arrived at my doorstep today in four boxes. Six and a half kilograms of lead and plastic. Quite a hefty order. But at least now I have everything I was still missing for my Waterloo project except for a few artillery pieces.

Sculpting practice

Being bored I got started on one of my goals for 2015 by starting to practice sculpting. I had originally planned to go the traditional way with green stuff and other sculpting putties, but then decided that digital sculpting is probably more for me. 3D printing masters for casting seems to be on the rise with for example Infinity models being designed on a computer. I have access to 3D printing and I've done 3D design as a living in the past before progressing to hating excel and writing e-mails, so I figured learning a new 3D tool shouldn't be too hard and could somehow be seen as improving myself professionally :)

So I went ahead and fired up ZBrush after looking up some tutorials on youtube and started experimenting. After the first hassle of getting used to a new program I started toying with it. My first effort could not stand the light of day, but now my next try at least ended up looking like something. Sculpting a human seemed a bit daunting so I just started doing a bust of some creature from my imagination and seeing where it goes. Ended up with something relatively humanoid with quite a bit borrowed from the aesthetics of Warhammer Bloodletters. After a couple of hours I now have the basic shape finished and waiting for details like wrinkles, scars etc. which will probably end up taking many times longer than everything until this point.

 

All in all I was actually quite surprised how easily it came about considering that I haven't done any organic modelling in my life and it's been about a year and a half since I last did any product development related work anyways. After this I'll see how a whole body will turn out and maybe try to do something a bit more realistic. I had a grand plan of sculpting some Napoleonic Swedish/Finnish troops and getting them printed and maybe some masters cast for my own use so I can play the Finnish War of 1808. It's still quite far away, but if the learning progresses as fast I might actually succeed in doing it this year :)

State of the hobby table

It's been a little quiet on the painting front with only about an hour a day spent painting on the best of days. Quite a bit of time has been spent wondering around shopping malls in preparation for some coming changes in the household. Unfortunately this tends to cut heavily into hobby time.

The PanOceania Infinity minis are still on hold. They did get back on the desk for a while, but after 5 minutes of staring they promptly went back in the back of the queue. Instead I've put together all the guns for my Barbarossa Germans with their anti-tank guns, infantry guns and smoke launchers. No primer on them yet, but I'll get to them soon. I'm still unsure whether I'll take part in the 'Myth' fortnight challenge, but just in case I prepped a Chimera so I can get started on him if I feel like it.

Finally the Secret Santa gift has mostly been put together. I still need to add rivets before it will get sent to the painting queue. I'm still undecided how to make the rivets. Readymade plastic profile would yield the best results, but I don't have any on hand and buying a rod just for this seems a bit daft. Still it's only a euro or so.

On the painting front I went blue with 3 battalions of French Middle Guard for Waterloo. Quite fast to do with blue paint applied by airbrush to cover 48 minis in just 30 minutes or so. I'm now working on them a battalion at a time with the first 16 now being washed and waiting for mud to be painted on the trousers and jackets before a matt varnish and basing. Not sure yet if I'll post them individually when done or in one large bunch.

Despite the slow start points wise I'm actually ahead of my target in the challenge with 415 points gathered so far. 50 points have come from the fortnight challenge though so it's not all from painting. We'll see if I can manage another points bomb for next Friday or not.

Challenge progress

Not much to show for progress as painting motivation seems quite elusive. Rainy weather at nearly 0 degrees and less than 6 hours of light every day isn't exactly helping as it's always dark when painting time comes. Nevertheless there is some progress and I might actually be able to achieve an entry on Friday!

I've gotten quite frustrated with the Infinity minis. I wouldn't have thought that I'd complain about some miniatures having too much detail, but these guys are incredibly slow to paint if you really want to paint them up nicely. I've decided to put the PanOceania minis aside for a while as I messed up some of the edge highlighting and it'll need fixing. The Nomads are progressing quite nicely now that I decided to simplify things a bit and do some of the highlights etc. just by drybrushing. Trying to individually highlight every single tiny hexagon on the Mobile Brigadas armor was too much and I just decided to stop trying to imitate the studio models too much :) Only minor details left like the hair etc. so these should be finished tomorrow.

With the frustration building up last weekend I started on some Panzerschützen. 2 full platoons and company command are on the line with one platoon just waiting for a wash and basing. I'm planning to have the 2 platoons, command and their vehicles done by next week. Not too joyful to paint though as these are absolutely the worst Battlefront offerings I've seen. The moulds are really starting to show their age with horrible amounts of flash and quite messed up detail on many of them.

Secret Santa comes knocking

I had a mystery package arrive at my door the other day and having a couple of deliveries coming in I went ahead and opened the box up to find a package from some mysterious benefactor! I took part in Secret Santa held by Ian of The Blog With No Name fame and I have now received my package with plenty of time left for Christmas! The package has now been hidden by my better half to minimize any urges to be a naughty boy and open gifts before time. Now there is definately something to wait for this Christmas :)

Thank you for the wonderful gift and I wish you Happy Holidays back!

I've also been making some christmas decorations after finding these Star Wars themed snowflakes by Anthony Herrera. Wonderful stuff with plenty of different designs. Nice details too like the small Ewok throwing a spear next to the AT-ST :)

Painting progresses slowly with the Infinity stuff. Skin details have now been painted, but I did have a small setback with one of the arms coming of during painting. Especially the female figures were too delicate to be able to pin very well and it's coming back to bite my arse. Hopefully it will stay on now, but in the meantime I guess I'll have to try to be extra careful with how I hold them to avoid any further breakdowns.