The Alluring Sisters (Witchcraft Coven)

Update: I won 1st place! Still haven’t fully processed it, and I’m in complete awe! But can’t wait to spend the €300!
Big thanks to Tabletop-World!

Okay, so recently we decided we would join the annual Tabletop World competition with a building in their single building category (there is also diorama) and we decided their Townhouse II as our entry.

Since their houses are barely 28mm scale, we chose some miniatures from Dark Sword’s George R.R. Martin Masterworks (Game of thrones) miniature line. Tom Meier doesn’t sculpt in heroic scale like Reaper, Games Workshop and Dark Sword’s other lines (heroic scale is larger heads/larger hands etc) and his miniatures tend to be a tad bit smaller than the other sculpters, so they fit perfectly into the building. For the interior we chose Irri – Handmaid and Female Courtesan, and for the bottom of the building sitting on boxes we chose Female Mage on Stairs sculpted by Patrick Keith, and she is quite bigger than the other 2 ladies, but we figured it wouldn’t matter :)

It’s the first time I ever take part in a painting competition, and I have no hopes what so ever of winning, but as I wrote in a previous post, you get 20% discount code just for participating :D which I will need for my river terrain board.

TheAlluringSisters01

It actually started out as just being 3 beautiful women in a house, but when my husband decided it needed a bench with a book on the balcony, the only book that looked good was a book with a chaos star symbol on it. And so the story of the Alluring Sisters were born! They are actually witches luring men into their cozy townhouse which always smells like fresh baked pies (wonder what is inside the pies!!)

It wasn’t initially part of the plan to paint the interior, but we decided it would be cool to show the theme of the project. So first off is the middle floor with a nice desk and furniture from Tabletop World, a large candleholder from Tabletop-Art, a Grandfather Clock from Zealot Miniatures and a cat from the set Edna, the Crazy Cat Lady from Reaper Miniatures.

Last but not least, the attic! We all have a creepy attic ;) and these ladies sure know how to decorate the top room of the house!

My husband really outdid himself with the altar! He used a ton of skulls for the base and half a table from Grendel for the altar. Book, candlesticks and most of the skulls are from Tabletop-art.
The wooden spikes are from Grendel aswell and the chain/heads are from our bits boxes.
I had a blast painting the altar, the summoning circle and the small table. The walls are painted with a mouldy effect, which gives the room a very eerie look!

We really wanted to paint the bottom room of the building too with a cauldron full of meaty bits and fresh baked pies, but we ran out of time and finished the day before the competition, so maybe some other time, who knows :-)

Standing Stones Diorama!

A little while ago my husband and I started making small terrain pieces to add a little flair to a forest scene, and this is one of the results.

Standing Stones

The base is made of thick plasticard with milliput on top, layered with a bit of modelling sand and some mud effects! The Rune Standing Stones are from Tabletop-Art.

Afterwards we added some tufts from MiniNatur and some model trees. The one to the left is from 4Ground. It’s a simple terrain piece but it looks really good on a game board, especially if you add miniatures! :)

A few close-ups:

Amazingly Detailed Terrain from Zealot Miniatures – Part One

Just as we thought our dog’s puppy stage was over, she decided to “adopt” a stray kitten. So we have had a lot of work to do at the moment!
We initially didn’t want a cat (Brunnhilde our dog is a lot of work herself) but she would constantly bark in our yard calling for the kitten. It got to the point where she couldn’t eat or sleep unless that darn cat was with her, so we decided to keep the cat (now known as Bertha) And they rarely leave each other’s side. They are so sweet together :-)

We live by the beach close to vacation homes, so often people “adopt” stray cats, only to leave them when summer is over. So she was a little scrawny thing just a week ago. We investigated the area and made 100% sure no one owned her (she was in a pretty sorry condition) And today we are going to the vet to check her out and to make arrangements for sterilization and earmarking.

Up next: Zealot Miniatures Furniture!

However, I still find time to paint! And I just finished painting half of the items I recently bought from Zealot Miniatures! They are 3D designed in very fine resin, and they look amazing on the board! The items vary in size though, for example, the food supplies and cutlery are more suited for ogres and orcs while the grandfather clock is probably more suited for gnomes and halflings.

First item on the list is the spinning wheel, which is a very delicate piece and I ended up with more glue on my hands than on the mini! But totally worth it in the end. It’s both tiny and cute!

Spinning Wheel

Next on the line is the map table, which is very cool and very unique! It fits perfectly inside a war room! I might have painted the ocean a bit too shiny, but it still looks very nice! It has a diameter of 32mm.

Map Table

The final piece for today (still have quite a few left) is the amazing and beautiful Alchemist’s Bench. I really love this piece. It’s 28mm scale but very delicate (40mm x 20mm) but it looks fabulous on the table! I added extra bits and pieces, though it has tons of details already!

Alchemist's Bench

I’m about to take a lot of pictures today, so expect a couple of posts next week! Oh and here is a little peak of the two lovebirds!

Hilde-Bertha

 

A Larder Shelf fit for a king! (or anyone who enjoys food!)

Just thought I’d squeeze in this little gem I finished painting a little while ago! I’m really proud of this one and it looks amazing on the table. I’ve been trying to clean out my miniatures, and replace the standard pieces with highly detailed and converted versions, and this is one of them!

shelf_aug_01

The shelf and broom are from Thomarillion, the flasks and barrel are from Fenryll, the pouch of plums (to the left of the shelf) and the package on top are from Tabletop-World. The baskets and letuce box on the bottom are from Ristuls Workshop, the middle boxes are from Fredericus Rex, and the pile of goods in the bottom and the sack on the left is from Baueda miniatures. So a lot of customizing and a whole lot of time included in this one. My husband picked out the parts and assembled this beauty and I painted it. It took much longer than anyone would expect, but it looks great in real life!

Fishing Village and Lots of new projects to come!

As it says in the title, I am working on quite a lot of projects at the moment. Right now our main goal at home is getting the gaming room done. We are turning a guest bedroom in our house into a room designed for RPG and board games (big nerd alert!), and it’s really something! I will be making a project with WiP pictures and notes about the details.

Since getting a new house and a puppy at the same time proved to be a whole lot of work, I still managed to paint a great deal on the side! So when I get around to it, I will be adding a new project involving Forest Goblins with treehouses and lots of spider accessories + arachnarok spider and so on! Everything is converted and scratchbuilt, so it’s very unique and impressing! I just need to take a lot of pictures and come up with a name for the project.

We moved into our new house in March and we haven’t had time to play any RPG since, so we are looking very much forward to start playing again soon. And with the newly announced Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) 4th edition on the way, we are super excited to see what Cubicle 7 can dish up! We use or own rulebook and system, but fluff and ideas are always welcome!

The next campaign will start in a shabby fishing village (most likely in Talabecland), so we need some new props and terrain for such place. The village is influenced by Flotsam from Witcher 2 video game, which suits our grim and perilous playstyle.

House Boat docked at the village

Permantly docked is this ship from Thomarillion, which has been completely covered in various bits and pieces. My husband is the genius behind the conversion (I just painted it!), so credit really goes to him. He used several stacked crates and barrels from Tabletop-Art, pieces from Lake Town set from Games Workshop, Ristul’s Market, Freebooter boat accessories, some jewelry and much, much more from our bits boxes. The mast is scratch-built with some string/rope attached!

Here is a few Work in Progress of the ship

For the Boat and some of the wooden barrels I used this combo of Blackened Brown, Brown Leather, Orange Leather, Sandalwood, Driftwood Brown and Thar Brown from Reaper and Scale75. The Scale paints are very good for drybrushing. Sandalwood is a really creamy colour, which I like a lot. I also use it to highlight Ashen Brown from Reaper for a vague pink-brown colour.

The boat in all its splendor!

Fishing House Boat

Despite the fact that the boat could have had more weathering to it, I’m satisfied with the result! The shack is obviously a toilet, but we thought it as the idea of a person who converted a toilet and added stairs for descending into the hull :-P

I’ve also begun painting the Micro art studios Fish market and extra crates. The scenery pieces are huge, so I might add some minor barrels and such to the pieces to make them appear less gigantic, and so that they can fit into my other market stands. The large crate pile with the dangling fish, came riddled with holes (air bubbles), which requires some heavy modifications, but I think it will end up really cool :) I love the squids!

Fish Stuff

More projects to come and much more minis! Just need to squeeze some photographing into my busy schedule!

Banquet – A Feast for the Eyes!

Phew, been so long since I last posted. But at last we have now unpacked everything, and everything in the house is working! And my painting table is all set up with loads of HobbyZone modules (pictures come later!)

And we will be picking up our new (and cutest in the world) puppy this Sunday! I hope I have time to paint, cause I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be quite occupied by the little rascal.

Anyways! A few years ago I bought a set of Fenryll’s Banquet Table to paint for a customer (I actually bought 2, because an arm was missing and the table was broken in the 1st box) a little expensive, but I thought I would have this made in a short while… Boy, was I wrong! I ended up dropping the whole commission, because the time involved making the banquet scene would make the price ridiculously high, and gluing all the tiny pieces together would take somewhere around 8 hours…

So a few months ago, I picked up the set again, because we needed something like this for our tavern scenes. I am now very happy with the decision of dropping the commission, because this took me and my husband a huge amount of time. The result however, is absolutely amazing and brings so much life to our RPG!

My husband assembled the banquet table, and since we decided to keep both sets, we agreed to go all out on accessories. While I assembled and customized the party guests (my husband helped too) The arms are ridiculously long, so I had to shorten those. And fixing them on the benches, my husband put together the table itself with the use of all our bitz boxes. We each spent atleast 8 hours that day, so that’s quite a lot!

Here’s a few work in progress pictures of the table:

As you can see, there’s a heapload of stuff on it and from so many different companies (Fenryll, Ristul’s Market, Thomarillion, Maxmini, Fredericus Rex, Tabletop-art and a few Games Workshop items).
Only slightly bad thing is the crazy amount of time it took painting it. I didn’t count the hours, but I spent many evenings painting it. I went for a dark tablecloth to highlight the feast :-)

Banquet Table

I painted the party-goers in many vibrant colours and the man resting his foot on the bench to the left, resembled Roche from the Witcher games, so I painted him accordingly!
All the benches can be used in a variety of ways. We didn’t glue them to the table, so we can use the table alone with RPG heroes and characters for a session, or we can use the benches for street scenes, church pews with happy people, or up against walls in taverns for a more rich scene!

The banquet scenery looks amazing in our dioramas. I will need to take some more pictures along with some of our other tavern scenes!

I still have 8 characters left from the other set and some benches from the kitchen set to make more of these guys, but all in good time :)

Medieval House Fronts – Fenryll Miniatures

We are almost packed and ready to move into our new house! We still have to wait 12 days, though. It’s going to feel like a looong time!

In the meantime, I thought I’d catch up with a post about 3 Fenryll Facades I painted some time ago. Since our gaming table isn’t very big (until we move!) Facades (or house fronts) are great for an easy set-up without filling the table with buildings. I made one of them a Jeweler’s Shop for our WFRP campaign! Used a lot of old bits and pieces to customize all the facades. Including some real jewellery for the sign and bits from the old Manor House Set from Games Workshop.

Fenryll House Front

The House Fronts were painted using Scale75 gold and metallic paints (from this Paint Set), Reaper paints and Citadel Paints (for the stonework) Also used a couple of posters for the shop sign and wall on the staircase version. I chose not to use the street diorama parts that came with the set as I deemed them too big, so I used some sidewalks from the Canadian company Kobblestone.

Next project is converting them to 1 large street piece, by converting the roofs or adding a background in between. Will look really great for showcasing miniatures!
Oh, and by the way! These looked really cool next to our Christmas Dioramas with a few “seasonalized” miniatures (dwarves with white beards and such) All three houses are available here: House Front # 1, House Front # 2, House Front # 3.

Khorne Slaughterhouse – Mordheim Terrain

Finally had some time to write a few posts! As my husband and I are moving into our new house in less than a month now, there has been less time to concentrate on painting. But in 5 weeks, I should be up to speed again.
Our entire miniature collection has already been packed and is safely stored, but I managed to take some pictures of a lot of them before “tucking them in” :)

One of the numerous additions to our Mordheim terrain is this mostly scratchbuilt and heavily converted Khorne house. As the name may suggest, this is not a cozy cabin, but the home of a Khorne warrior who somehow wound up in the ruined city of Mordheim.

khorne_slaughterhouse_01

The idea was that he walks around capturing victims to build a very nice shrine to Khorne, including a blood filled one and a skull filled one (Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne) and of course brass details :)

He has chosen an old doctor’s office as a home! Tried some free-hand on the signs, but it proved to be a bit messy :-P

The walls are spare parts of Escenorama’s building set.

 

Advertising Pillars – Commission

In December I worked on a commission for a British customer who really liked the Advertising Pillars I made last year. I made two for him using the same method as the previous one, but with a different quality in paper (much better)

As they were supposed to be a bit different from each other, I made one of them using only cut-outs of advertisement/commercials and another using only recruitment and Wanted posters. The one on the left is the commercial one and the one on the right is the public information one :-)

Most of the posters are from various authentic posters, Fable and Witcher 2 & 3 video games, and a few Games Workshop ones. I just noticed now that a Wanted poster sneaked into the commercial pillar (guess they were very important to catch!)

 

Old Blacksmith’s Forge from Tabletop World

Finally managed to snap some pictures of my old Blacksmith’s Forge from Tabletop World. This is their second version of a Blacksmith and is sadly no longer available. This was one of those do-it-yourself kits that took 10 hours to assemble, using hot water for bended parts (mine even arrived with broken pillars) and gluing the thing together.

This was my 3rd Tabletop World building and the first one where I didn’t paint interior, since lifting the roof included lifting the pillars on the stairs, and they were so fragile that I glued to whole thing together.
The older models included a bunch of furniture and accessories, so those were used for a lot of different projects! The new easy-assemble models are much less of a headache but doesn’t come with furniture and accessories. Which is totally fine by me :-) I really prefer the new models “assembling-wise”.

Since this was my 3rd painted Tabletop World building, a lot has changed since then! I probably would have painted it different now, but I rarely repaint my old painted terrain as it’s also fun to see how much I have progressed.

It might be hard to see it from the picture, but Tabletop World’s buildings were a whole lot larger back then. Somewhere down the line, the buildings shrunk to a 25mm scale (tops) for miniatures which is a shame, but they still look awesome :-) I actually started out with painting the interior of the rather new Town Gate, but the miniatures looked like giants and even without base they were still atleast a head taller than the doorways! You don’t notice that at all from the outside though! Which is why I usually resort to gluing everything together.

Only exception is the Guard Tower (it’s an old DIY kit that they revived as an easy-to-assemble version) I painted the interior of the wooden floor (the one with arrowslits) and furnished it with armor and weapon racks. But again, it’s an old model and the scale of that one is 28-30mm.