WIP: 2016 Christmas Diorama

Christmas is slowly approaching, which means that it’s time for yet another Christmas Diorama. Last year my husband put together a small outdoor Christmas Diorama, which I painted.
We decided to do another one again this year, but this time it’ll be a bit more complex. You can follow the progress of the Christmas Diorama in the Projects Section or by clicking here. 

The scene/story is set in Santa Claus’ home, where a young Mrs. Clause has brought her hot friend over, where together they’ll  surprise Santa Claus when he returns home after a long day of work delivering presents.

So the very first thing was to start building a floor and some walls. We cut out some styrofoam to use as walls and used some cardboard (Was actually a component from a board game) for the bottom. Below you can see the very first picture of the project, after 1 layer of plaster on the styrofoam walls.

Walls & Bottom #1

Miniatures & Furniture

We decided to use The Medieval Fireplace from Fenryll as the primary furniture in the diorama, setting up the scene around the large fireplace. As Mrs. Clause we’ll be using Mrs. Clause and Schnauzers from Dark Sword Miniatures and as Mrs. Clause’s naughty friend – Christmas Sophie 2009 from Reaper Miniatures without her wings!

The next picture shows the walls glued onto the bottom and two wooden sticks added to the top. Sophie is resting by the fireplace inside.

Walls & Floor #2

Click here to see more of the project! 

Jessica, Keeper of the Glade – Gift for my Niece

As you might know, I paint a lot! Usually it’s 28mm miniatures on 25mm round bases, terrain, or monster miniatures on large bases etc, since I either use them for Rpg’s or sell them. I rarely get to paint something decorative with scenic display or anything like that. Mostly because we live in a small apartment and our number of miniatures is pretty high (though you can never get enough of them!)
My niece really likes my miniatures, and I thought I would paint something nice for her as a Birthday present. So I got to paint a nice display mini :-D

Jessica, keeper of the glade

I mounted the mini on a solid stone plinth with a good grip (for easy handling, she is 9 after all :) The mini is the “Jessica, Keeper of the Glade” from Dark Sword Miniatures and is scuplted by Jeff Grace. I initially wanted to paint the “Marike – Guardian of the Sea”, but the details are pretty immense, so I settled with this one and painted it very high fantasy with vibrant colours and even peacock feathers (only on the backside since I was afraid it would look too messy on the front) My niece thought the blood was a bit nasty, but it is part of the mini!

Here are some more shots of the miniature! Snapped a bunch of pictures before the birthday :)

I decided not to add anything to the base apart from a bit of weathering, since I wanted the miniature to be the main focus. Only downside is that the mini is 28mm scale, and the rest of the family (the older part in particular) had a pretty hard time spotting details unless it was underneath a lamp :-P Will look great on a shelf anyway!

The miniature was painted using Scale75 and Reaper paints (especially the Ocean Colors Triad)

Commissioned Arcane Ranger!

I painted this very cool Elven Ranger for a customer in Italy a few months ago, and I thought it deserved a post on my blog!

The customer was very specific and brought artwork for me to work with which turned out helpful! The elf is a sort of spellcasting ranger meant for rpg games (a character he plays) So I added magical looking arrows and as requested: a platinum hair-do with blue/violet highlights.

The dark colours on his bow and clothing are a bit hard to see on the pictures, but he looked really cool in front of me, and despite the fragile nature of Dark Sword Miniatures it survived the trip to Italy.

I actually planned on buying this miniature for myself, just for the joy of painting it. So luckily I had the chance to mix it with commission. The mini is the very cool Male Elven Ranger with Bow from Dark Sword Miniatures – also known for the not-so-inventive names they give miniatures xD Think I have 3 different miniatures named Female Assassin!