So, you wanna be the master of…Malifaux?

Do you have the skills to be…..come a bro?

I wanna beeee the veeeery best, that no one ever waaaas.

Sorry folks. It’s been a Pokemon kind of day

So, recently, I have been playing a bit of the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and actually thoroughly enjoying it. To be fair, I do not versus other players – I just use the stock standard trainer decks it gives you and battle the occasional NPC.

This got me in the mood for buying packs, something I find highly additive, exciting and often soul crushing.

ANYWAY, I get home with my little foil sealed packets of potential devastation and find this:

So on the left is my “bonus foil” and on the right is my “1 x rare”. They were actually the same card. What are the odds, ey??

Apparently pretty damned high. This has now happened to me a good 5-7 times. What is the go? Is it because the set has so few cards in it!? Or do I have magical pack-picker talons on me?

This got me in a nostalgic mood for checking out some of my older collection..

I miss the days where “foil” actually meant, do not expose to direct sunlight as you might burn a hole in the ozone with the reflection bouncing off of that bad-boy.

While I was digging these out of their super-secret-hidey-space I found a bunch of clippings I’d put into a folder with my cards.

Wow, $109.90!? Are you dicking with me? Should probs be nicer to the parents, the struggle to afford to raise a nerdy child was real.

Moving right along…I have been continuing to paint my Seamus Malifaux ladies – although, one of my hookers in tights appears to have gone missing. I cannot tell you, how devastating that is to me, to own a “set” that is not in fact “complete”. Like for MULTIPLE reasons, this is heavily upsetting. But we soldier on.

Wanna see me twerk it to Katy Perry’s – This is how we do?

So, unfortunately, I didn’t know that the angle I was on was casting such an orange hue over my photo – but we work with what we’ve got. The back of her dress is getting some highlighting and her skin is undergoing a little correcting time.

I actually dropped the whole mini in my drive way, skinning the paint off of her face, knees and the front of her dress directly after painting this.

Yooooou dropped me!? ME? Have you seen me? I’m amazing. I don’t know if we can hang out anymore, Ellie.

I tried my best to fix her back up, but she undeniably now had some uneven textures and variations in colour. Ah well, if anyone asks I’ll say she’s growing lumps.

Well, as per always, great chats! We should do this again soon.

~ El

Advertisement

Painting, Paining and Clock Work Gaming!

Hello lovely people!

Recently, I traveled to Geelong (Australia) for the Clock Work Dragon event.
This was a Warmachine Tournament charity event for raising food for the homeless.

Wait! One of these guys is a slow walker.

Although I wasn’t competing in this event – I was volunteering and running around being an all general pest with my phone camera.

The event was 3 rounds (35pt) of 6 competing teams of 5.

During the lunch intermission, everyone signed their name in front of their army (or specific model) and left for lunch allowing for painting judging to proceed.

It was AMAZING to see some of the things people had painted.
The names of the painters have been cropped out as I don’t want to be posting people’s names – but how awesome are these!? I love seeing other peoples beautiful work.

In the end, the event raised over 4000 cans of food for the homeless!!

Awesome effort from everyone! And now my upper arms know the meaning of paint when it came time to moving that from the room to the various charity cars.

AAAANY how, in Ellie land, I have been getting back into painting! I finally have some free time after settling into my new office and my new role at work.

Hello, I will be your waitress for this evening. Do you prefer to be roasted? Or fried?

Her skin did NOT come out at all how I intended. My idea was to give her a kind of purple hue to make her look a bit pasty and dead. Instead, I just ended up making her look actually skin toned.
Ugh – ah well.

Oh oh oh, my other news! Everyone, gird your loins.
PAX 2015 is upon us.

Well – love you all! See you again next time for another ‘Things I have been doing, without any coherent style of commentary’.

~Ellison

Interviewing and Alephs!

Ok, let’s start with the Internet.

Gaming-guy.com ever so flatteringly asked if I was willing to do an interview for his page about my miniature painting!! Eeee!
The conversation may have deviated at time from gaming topics to cheeseburger dreams, but I felt thoroughly spoiled that anyone liked my little corner of the internet enough to post about it!

So head on over if you’d like to read the interview – but be warned – there is an ever large picture of my ugly mug smiling at you with caffeine obsessed eyes. Hehe.

So finished up my last Asura for my Aleph Infinity guys!

I’m going back through all 6 of them to give them touch-ups, fix highlighting etc at the moment, but otherwise – they’re now all done!!

This girl need some more dimension to her hair, and another pass of white on her back inner thigh but otherwise – finished!!

Painting Sage thinks he might have some cool bases to go on these guys so hoping to paint those up as well. My only trepidation is that these guys are very fragile so I’m SURE I’m going to break someone getting them off their current base. Wish me luck!!

Sincerely,
Ellie

Battle for Sophia Oct 2013

Ok everyone! I would like to begin this post by advising that I am not connected to this event in anyway – merely that I have been reading about it and thought it deserved a spot on my blog.

So, the Battle for Sophia is an Oxfordshire-based wargaming club are set to play the popular tabletop game; Warhammer Fantasy, in an endurance marathon for 48 hours in a bid to raise donations for Sophia – a young Witney resident with Spastic Diplegia, a form of Cerebral Palsy, who is in need of a crucial operation and months of post op physio.

The event, dubbed ‘The Battle for Sophia’ will take place Friday 25 to Sunday 27 October, at the club’s headquarters in Carterton.

Sophia having her photo taken for the local news paper

The tabletop game will play continuously for 48 hours with players taking shifts, and will be broadcast live over the web for supporters to see the action progressing. The game will be played on a massive 12’ by 4’ table, will use more than 50 terrain pieces and over 2000 miniatures, many of which have been beautifully hand-painted.

And here are some links to further information:

http://innsmouthgamingclub.wordpress.com/

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?380215-48-hour-Warhammer-Game-Battle-for-Sophia

http://www.sophiassteppingstones.co.uk/

Paintball, Painting and WTF did I just play?

Let’s begin this story with the fact that I participated in Paintball this weekend.
Now, as much as I can hear you doing a fist pump and a ‘Hells yeaaa’ this was more of a revolutionary awakening for myself to absolutely know – I will not survive the Zombie apocalypse.
Honestly speaking when the virus ridden cannibals start roaming the streets – I’ll already be one of them, don’t worry about coming to save me.

Now for a small update on painting!!

So I’ve been experimenting with paper to see if there’s anything comparable to the P3 parchment paper to use to put my paints on. Here’s how I went:

• Standard Paper = No. It dissolves easily.
• Baking Paper = No. The wax being placed either up OR down creates a water repellent barrier that doesn’t allow the paint to remain wet.
• Tracing Paper = Maybe. I’ve had a limited amount of success with tracing paper keeping paint wet for about 24 hours. But not much longer.
• Tradesman Paper = Maybe. This is actually paper made of a type of stone. It’s oil and water proof, but this actually made it PAINT proof, meaning that if the paint was thick enough, it just sat around on the top with the water keeping liquid for about 48 hours. Not bad but not great.

TRADEY PAPER. FOR THE TOUGH MAN… Or for the 5 foot nothing woman trying to paint tiny people.

The tracing paper on the left, and the Tradesman paper on the right after 24 hours.

So, using my ‘temporary’ wet palette, I got to trying to fix horsey.
I did this by adding an orange/brown type colour to the original brown and re-going over the highlights and then toning them back again with flesh wash. I think it’s a bit of an improvement but not great.

You still haven’t fixed my saddle woman. I mean seriously, who rides a saddle without stirrups?

I also used black wash to give him a slightly darker tone on his hocks. I was going to do him full bay colour and black them out, but I figured – he’s obviously no REAL breed of horse anyways, so we shall cheat! MWAHAHAHA.

—-

In PC gaming news, I have gotten addicted to the Mighty Quest for Epic Loots.

So the point of this game is to build a castle, and other people can attack it. If they beat you castle they get a % of your loots (gold and gems) – if you attack them back you get a % of theirs.

How anyone travels from castle to castle is currently a mystery. Pegasus ponies maybe??

My castle in all it’s glory. AAAAANNND can be beaten in about a half a minute. Sorry gems, it was nice while it lasted.

The idea is that people get more and more creative with how they set up traps and monsters and try to catch you out. So far mines a pretty straight forward Walk in > Beat obvious frog guys > Take my shit.

There’s just a heart warming feeling knowing the loots you scored were actually another players. MWAHAHA.

Other than this – I also got Anna some time back if anyone remembers? But I hadn’t actually played it.

Regret.
So much regret.

Welcome to Anna. Where the best part of the game is the font the title shows in.

So it’s a horror puzzle game. Where the puzzles are actually ridiculous. After 10 minutes of kicking around in this pretty outdoors area I had to google what I was supposed to be doing.
Would you believe I was meant to go find a branch, use to to move rocks in the river, fill up my canteen and catch a glass shard – and then just HAPPEN to work out that I need to set this glass shard on fire using a pinecone while sitting in the groove of a stone eye.
Like…what the actual fuck?

We’re trying to look dark and ominous. Instead we’re just giving you a headache with the overdone music and shitty lighting.

You fumble around in the water mill for a while finding random objects, like this prize winning message on a handkerchief.

I’m pretty sure I follow the 14 year old girl that wrote this on Tumblr.

I ended up giving up the game after I illuminated some magical bridge over a puddle and got to enjoy the ‘horrific’ image of a stick figure hugging kids in the water.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal was the art work for the kids. Really? REALLY? We allowed someone to publish that nightmare?

Neeeeedless to say, I won’t be finishing this game. I have plenty of better ways to spend an hour. Like you know, sniffing paint.

Well, that’s all for this evening folks.
I have a tendency to waffle – my apologies.

Night all!!

Little Update..You could even call it a ‘Miniature’ one.

AAAAAAAAAHAHAHA.

My wit. Sometimes I even surprise myself with my on-the-fly puns.

*cough*

Aaaannny how. Just a small update today!
Headed over to the Painting Sage‘s laboratory (also known as his painting table in the back room) and got to continuing painting my Infinity miniatures.
(You can hear HIS regaling tail of this evening here: Sagey-ness links )

You can leave me here. It’s comfy on this fluffy paint splotched mess.

I know this is a bit of a stupid photo, but because he leans so far over – resting him on this back, propped up by paintbrush wiping tissues was the easiest way to grab a quick shot.
I still need to clean up a number of bits on him – but he is now relatively done!! WOOHOO.

4/6 Infinity Miniatures completed!!

So I got a start laying down base colours on this girly.

El, please remind your readers that the camera adds 10lbs. Thanks so much.

I have started making highlights on her skin. Even though she is a much more lifelike skin tone than the previous guy, I’m actually finding her harder to highlight because bringing the colour up a stage without it just being WHITE is proving a little difficult.
But we persevere!!

Well, that’s all I have time for. Time to sleep so I can awake early and get shot at by people with paint filled rifles.

Painting Horses is too hard. I quit.

I suppose I should probably start with the reason for the title of my post.

So, as I posted last time – I ended up starting actually painting one of the Warhammer 40k horses I was given and I was busy blocking in base colours.
I had tutorials a-plenty and proceeded onwards.

It. Was. Awful.

This is with just the Devlin Mud wash to start. Not too bad so far…

….until I attempted to highlight ANYTHING.

What have you done to me!? I look like I have patches of leprosy!!

EDIT: I’ve just noticed that this photo doesn’t really show up the horrendous highlighting. Trust me, it looks WAY WORSE in person.
EDIT 2: Here is a better picture of the highlighting. I turned my flash right up to try to get ever individual stroke to reflect so it shows how I was actually painting it.

Uuugh. I tried a million different things to try to correct this obvious, patchy, chalky looking highlight but I was totally lost.
I have realised than before I started painting miniatures I always thought the ones with heaps of little bits all over them would be REALLY hard, and the mostly smooth ones (like this) would be simple. At least if there were ‘bits’ I could highlight an edge – instead of what I’ve done here which is randomly dragging lighter coloured paints across a once pretty pony.

Might have to take it around to Painting Sage and see what he thinks about how to fix it. *sigh*

Well, I also got a start on one of the 3 remaining Infinity miniatures, the hacker.

L is for LOSER! Also legos, lemons and ‘let’s be friends’.

I have absolutely been dreading the highlighting of the black on these minis. And as much as I don’t really have the hang of it, highlighting with this blue colour is much nicer than I imagined highlighting black would be.

He looks really blotchy unfortunately but I’m hoping as the white get’s shaded and I start finishing him up I can clean that up a little. Hmm.

Well! I think time for sleep. Gah – sleep is so overrated.

Goodnight friends!
~ Ellie.

My Next Challenge: Try to not break anything

It appears that I have, as of late, developed an inability to hold anything….or at least, inability to hold Infinity miniatures for any prolonged amount of time. *sigh*

Do not fear! We have come with the power of tinyness.

So I got them to around this stage (which for me is – yea pretty much done) and then what did I do? I dropped one, bent it’s whole shoulder guard/wing thing in and chipped off all the paint! (Many sounds were made, tears were shed, regrets were had).
Painting Sage attempted to rescue my work for me by quickly placing a lacquer type varnish over it that saved a lot of my paint job and returned it to me.

20 minutes later….I dropped the SAME MODEL. ON THE OTHER WING.

Really, to be honest. I shouldn’t be allowed to touch things in general.
Ah well….spent the rest of my time trying to fix his little attachments and got them sort of back to the state they were in.

I have also decided to ‘mark’ my Infinity army with my own symbol.

What have you done do us, girl? Put some weird M sign on my thighs? I’ll never be able to wear stockings again! Pssh

So it’s actually a bat. This is because I wear a lot of black and a number of people (including beloved Painting Sage) like to call me a varying range of ‘vampire’, ‘goth’ or ‘corpse bride’ haha whatever. Either way I often refer to myself as a bat so I went with a little bat.

Other than these guys I finally started painting one of the horses my friend gave me.

I appear to have the body shape and head of a Standardbred, and the feet of a Clydesdale..I’m a CLYDARDSDALE!!

I’m using him to attempt a different method of painting. I normally focus on one ‘area’ like skin and then finish it before moving onto the next – this time I’m going to block in all the base colours first and work my way out from there. Let’s see how it goes!!

I’d also like to note, he has developed this weird grainy film all over patches of him. I’m not sure what caused it, but it’s really hard to try to paint ‘smoothly’ over.

Oh last thing I should tell you all…I discovered the tiniest wontons in the world.

Like…seriously. It’s like eating a largish kidney bean. It’s so small my Infinity mini’s could use it as a decently sized pillow.
Fail Wonton company. Just fail.

Love from El

Gifts, Pizza and Painting

So, well – I am the type of girl that gets heavily into her hobbies. By that I mean, I constantly read about them, want to be actively doing them, spend wild amounts (at least to my bank balance) of money on them AND talk about them.

I have been yammering on a lot to a friend of mine about Malifaux, Puppet Wars, War Machine and everything else miniature related I have been learning.
ANYWAY, long story short, the other day he comes out with this big box and gifts me all of his miniatures stuff. Apparently he was into Warhammer 40K a while back but hasn’t had much to do with it for a while and wanted it to go to a home where the mini’s would be painted and cherished.

Omg omg omg, no idea how excited I was to go through everything and start plotting bases and paint schemes.

Sooo many things!! And most of them still on their sprues!! (Is that how you spell that?)

So, I pulled out this little guy holding a big flag and thought it would be nice to paint him up really nice, and put something on the flag and gift back to the friend that gave me the box. Just to see that I was putting love into their painting and appreciate the gift.

But the skull at the top of the flag had been eaten away/melted by something?
So, here is my first attempt at making an epoxy replacement.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA. That skull looks REDICULOUS. But alas, it was made with love…or…something. Maybe I can fix it with paint?

Well, this is his progress so far…

I also had a few in the box that my friend had painted himself.
The flags on this are just so nice, and you can see effort was put into this mini, so I don’t have it in me to strip him. My plan is to just clean up a few paint chips, and add him to my shelf.

*Disclaimer: Not painted by me.

In the box I found a few choice items I was really excited about…

Do you see? DO YOU SEE? PONIES.

There were a couple of horse and rider sets already painted in the box so I decided to fix and strip them first. As they were mostly a single thick coat of black it took forever scrubbing, and it ended up actually leaving tiny little ‘bubble’ type holes all through out the horses saddle.
So I green stuffed the saddle and top of tail and sanded it back, after having soaked and scrubbed with Simple Green.

Now, my first pony is up to the stage of priming and painting.

PONY. SO EXCITED TO PAINT THIS PONY. EHEHEHEHE.

Well, I can smell my pizza has now finished cooking – so I shall see you all soon. Post more miniatures everyone 😀 !

Love always,
Ellison