GnomishNotions

 I had an idea for how to use some plastic ant antenna I had collected while converting the Tyranid ships for G&G Battlefleet Gothic - 6mm beholders! First, i looked through a collection of beads my mother kindly offered to me and found two that measured a little under 1cm across. I glue these to paper-clip flight stands and filled the hole on top with superglue. Next, I took 20 of the ant antenna and glue 10 to the top of each bead to form the beholder's eye tentacles. An image of the finished figures before painting Next came painting! It took four coats to get an even colour on the miniatures due to the slipperiness of the beads. Doing a pre-coat with watered down white glue may have help the paint stick more quickly and evenly but ultimately the result was more than satisfactory. For the eyes, I started by painting the rough shape in black, adding thick black dots to the end of each tentacle. Next came white, followed by an iris of orange for the red beholder and yellow for...

 A big dream of mine is making miniature representations of the creatures in the AD&D monster manual. I've never had a lot of funds for miniatures which has instilled in me an interest in gaming on a budget. The holy grail of  D&D and cheap miniatures are the chinasaurus - plastic dinosaur toys which gave rise to creative monsters like the bulette, owlbear, and rust monster. Examples of figures I started with.  With this inspiration in mind, a bought a pack of cheap plastic dragons from the dollar store to use to make the different D&D chromatic dragons to use in various games. I started by going through the pack, choosing dragons that best matched the description and artwork in the monster manual. In addition to have one of each of the classical chromatic dragons, I managed to make two wyverns (allowing for one with a rider) buy trimming the front legs off of two of the smallest dragons in the pack. I also removed the wings from two of the beasties to use as ...

 After a series of setbacks and stalls on my Ork Roks, I haven't been feeling excited about Battle Fleet Gothic as much. That said, I managed to acquire some cheap plastic creepy crawlies that I wanted to try to convert into Tyranid bug ships which I hoped would be easier to assemble and paint. The crawlies in question I started with one single large plastic crab (destined to become my hive ship) and a few ants. I wanted to create at least three different kinds of vessels to give my forces some variety and also wanted to try basing a squadron of smaller vessels. So, the plan was to create one large flagship, a medium-sized 'cruiser', and a smaller collection of 'destroyer' or 'frigate' sized vessels.  I began (completely without a plan) by taking the plastic ants and chopping off the head and all the limbs. I noticed the heads, once they had the antenna removed, looked similar to horseshoe crabs - a great base for my 'destroyers'. I experimented brie...