Work-in-progress

The Burn in Designs windmill continued to cause me some issues – it looked like it was designed so you could rotate it, but without having enough parts to actually be able to rotate it. I still couldn’t figure out what the little sticky uppy bit was! I drilled and pushed the nail into the smaller round bit, then glued the larger one on to hide it.

Used a tiny little plastic screw and a lot of glue to provide just a little nub to give some traction so it doesn’t slide off. It didn’t have to be tight or solid, just keep the top of falling off if you brush it.

The solution isn’t perfect, as the nail isn’t long enough or heavy enough to hold it in the box. Maybe if I put another piece of wood on the end of it?

This is another piece that confused me to as to how to build it properly.

I got this far without trouble. There are stabilizing pieces inside the center of the tower to help put it together, a feature that was very much appreciated! Same in the cylindrical tower – pieces that look almost like garbage are actually there to hold the vertical slats on (you can see them better in the next photo, top left).

But the final build has a thing sticking out of it. And while I have no problem seeing how it’s supposed to attach, I don’t see how it’s supposed to not get ripped off after a moment in my terrain box!

I solved this problem at roughly the same time as my windmill problem. I used my pinvice to drill holes into the triangular pieces, and also the rectangular “faucet”. Then I took a nail from our hardware bin in the closet and made it fit.

So now I can pull the nail out to remove the faucet when storing it!

This cute little building doesn’t fit into my existing architecture at all. These wood sprues came with so many little extras that I had no idea how to put it all together. It even came with little jutty out windows that might sit on the roof. I didn’t put them on, because there’s no second floor.

More terrain! I figured my little town could use a wagon…or two.

There are no assembly instructions for these guys, so it’s a guessing game of figuring out what goes where. It’s ok for the most part, except when you think the yoke is an axel.

I figure it out eventually. 😛

I decided to do some test painting on some of the scatter terrain before I got to any of the big pieces. I picked up some water-based stain product at Canadian Tire that I hoped would do part of the process for me.

I’m not certain about this stuff. Not because it isn’t effective, but because it kind of just looks like brown acrylic paint put into a bottle labelled “stain”. I have “Dark Walnut” and “Cognac” colours, because I wanted a variety to try.

The directions recommend applying with a sponge, then wiping off the excess – as with our paints, they are formulated to dry as-is, so if you don’t wipe off the excess you’ll get chunky bits left over. Here are 4 different test processes:

From left to right:

1. Dark Walnut, then drybrush Snakebite Leather, then drybrush Vomit Brown.
2. Cognac, then wash Seraphim Sepia, then drybrush Zamesi Desert. I had to use my finger to wipe some of the Zamesi off as it was a little moist for drybrushing. Then drybrush Vomit Brown.
3. Dark Walnut, then drybrush Mournfang Brown, then drybrush Tallarn Sand.
4. Cognac, then drybrush Vomit Brown.

So far #4, the far right, is winning in both looks and in ease of process. I sent this photo to some local friends and they preferred the ones done with the Cognac, so I’ve painted my entire scatter set in Cognac and now just have to drybrush the Vomit all over.

When it comes to the bigger buildings, I might try a variety of processes. Also, because these are water-based I may be able to mix with my acrylics anyway – maybe get some greyer wood, or redder wood etc.

Some more of the Burn in Designs stuff. This was the first item I built, but posted the Windmill because I wanted help with it. 😛 I definitely needed more “little things” to go in the middle of my table – lots of buildings and such, but something you just need a little thing to walk around.