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Birthday Haul, Cake and Halflings

Today I got a pile of nice things for my birthday…

No surprises as I ordered them for myself, but it was the thought that counts 😂

I am pleased with the Battle Valour stuff as I am the only person to have Some of them cue evil laugh… Mwa ha ha ha . Well okay someone may have ordered from the states, but I got mine from the only uk distributor.

I got some Ashigaru with yari as well as some more samurai. The other new things are the witches and a seer who has a cat face, the. There are the Oni hounds both large and effing huge. I also got Featherstone’s play with yourself book. I am still a bit worried that I might not find anyone to play with.

My eldest made me a cake…

I also managed to get my halflings nearly finished…

Just the bases and weapons to do.

Nature update… we put a feeder up last year for the birds and as a family of starlings was nesting nearby I thought I would help out by adding mealworms and fat balls… they have been very popular, then today this happened…

These are all fledglings

So we had a few popping too and fro…you cannot actually see them all in the photo…See how many there were… these were all youngsters

I have never seen as many fledglings in one place,

Tomorrow I hope to finish my halflings then maybe onto the skeletons, I also found my 6mm road wars stuff that definitely needs finishing.

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Super Teeny Halflings

By definition halflings are small, so as you can imagine 1:300 scale halflings are very small indeed.

These were sprayed yesterday so had 24 plus hours to cure. I decided to make them colourful as befits a halfling force. Still a good old bit to do but getting there.

I got an email from Irregular today to say that my parcel was on its way. Now that is a pretty speedy turnaround considering I ordered it on the 4th July and today is the 6th.

That reminds me, tomorrow I can celebrate by getting my Birthday present of more of the Battle Valour Samurai bits and pieces. My mate Martin let me know that they had come into his the country…so I managed to get them before they went onto the online store. I thought they would make a fitting pressie… prepare to be bored by photos of them tomorrow 😂.

Today was a day of ups and downs. Our cat of nearly 15 had to go to the vet and we actually thought we might not be brining him home, but luckily the new Vet decided to do some bloods and gave him a once over and we still have him. He is probably going blind and he has a heart murmur, not to mention a kidney problem… she reckons he has got a bit more time in him yet…but considering when we got him at two weeks old (he had been abandoned) and hand reared him, we didn’t think he would make it through the night as he had been fed cows milk by the lady who found him, after he had been left for a fair old while. He was covered in crap and was a pooh brown colour, it was only when we bathed him that we realised that he was black and white…There were seven in the litter and he had outlasted them all, which considering he was the runt is pretty impressive.

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6mm Samurai Finished

Tonight I got the mon put onto the sashimono and the tufts stuck on. I am really pleased with how they have come out. I might change the colour of the mon, but I will see how the white grows on me.

I might have to search through my tufts as I have about 15 left of these ones. Problem is I can’t remember where I got them or what they are called!

I made a start on the the halfling army by spraying them white, along with some orc chariots and a couple of ogres too. I will get some paint on them tomorrow. They might take a while as they are going to be in lots of bright colours as befits a halfling force.

I also got a small file onto the Battle valour samurai. I hadn’t noticed before but the mould lines are really bad on some of them. It was only when I sprayed them white that I noticed.

So it has been quite a productive day. I spent a lot of it in the big shed, sorting it out so that we can set it up more as a craft room. The resin will go out there. My wife has her office out there so I can’t put the resin printer in there. That will go into my bottom shed, once I sort it out!

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We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat!

As I said in yesterday’s post, we have been visited by large pods of orca. This is someone my wife knows who had a close encounter…

Photo by Karen Hall

The boat is in the foreground of the picture.

So far this year we have had dolphins – pod of about 40 of them. Orca, humpback, Minke and also a Sperm whale.

We set the camera trap up near the stream and got some great rare birds. We caught a male teal as well as some grey wagtails. Not to forget the regular snipe, oyster catchers and mallards, including a pile of ducklings. We haven’t managed to catch the otter, but one of the Oyster catchers spend ages preening itself in front of the camera so we got loads of footage of him having a right good clean.

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Basing, nearly done

Tonight I based up the samurai.

Still the tufts to add, but definitely getting there.

I did have a bit of an accidental purchase of another army this evening. I was on Irregular’s website and was after some bits and bobs and somehow managed to hit purchase on a Khmer army.

The other news is that the printer has arrived. I am leaving it in it’s box until a) my Birthday on Tuesday and b) I actually have somewhere to put it where the fumes aren’t going to kill me!

The other thing that came today are bucket loads more resin stuff for the kids and I to mess with. This time UV resin and well as a light and colourants and hundreds of moulds.

Oh and one last thing… we have had special visitors around Shetland over the last couple of weeks…

Not my Photo, but Richard Ashbee’s

Facebook has a Shetland Orca sighting if anyone is interested 😉

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Sengoku Jidai .. Almost There

Tonight whilst watching Frozen II I managed to get these based up.

I was dead chuffed that they were finished… it was as I had glued the last one down that I realised that I had forgotten the Sashimono… I swore…lots. Tomorrow I hope to get the bases flocked and also the sashimono finished.

I might order some monks for Irregular, they are 5 to a strip so are on a smaller frontage but I don’t think it would matter that much. I also might order one of the banner troops from the Sons of Set. This would make a good background filler for the seated Daimyo. The big Nobori banners they are holding would work well I would imagine.

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Sengoku… Nearly There

Tonight I cracked on whilst watching Monsters Versus Aliens. I am now within spitting distance of finishing.

It is so funny. Yesterday I hated these and today with a bit of flesh colour, some silver and a lot of black then I actually quite like them again. My next thing is the sashimono design. To save time and effort it will either be a straight line or a circle in the middle. I am probably going to go with white. Originally I was going to go with Gold, but I have now decided against it. The four mounted banners will have four similar designs, a bit like I did with the Sons of Set.

My resin has come, my UV light has come, my resin funnel has come, the one thing missing is the actual printer.

I was asked to show some WIP of the resin pouring that the kids and I did yesterday. So here we go..

On the left my son’s paper weight, then my eldest’s shot glass out of the mould and on the right one still in the mould.

Tomorrow is the last day of school in Shetland. So I will be running around like a bit of a loon to get stuff ready so that I won’t have to go in next week.

I am hoping that I can get these Samurai finished and based tomorrow evening.

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Sengoku… Arggggghhhhh

More work on the 6mm Samurai and I absolutely hate them. They just seem to be taking forever!

Weapons are all painted in now as well as the sashimono poles. Hands are repainted white ready for the flesh colour. I reckon a few more days and they will be done. Still no sign of the printer ☹️. The kids and I played with the resin and a couple of the moulds today. They ran around and collected flowers from outside and put them into the moulds. They should be ready by tomorrow evening.

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Shetland… Sunset to Sunrise

So I have shown a few photos and videos showing the light levels we get in the summer. Someone just shared this with me. It is a time lapse of over 2000 photos taken at Muckle Flugga at the far north of Unst.

Muckle Flugga was the most Northery manned lighthouse in the Uk. The outer stack is the most northerly part of the Uk, and is beyond the lighthouse.

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Sengoku Jidai… Further work

Tonight was tedious in the extreme. Painting teeny tiny faces and weapons white on 6mm miniatures.

Tomorrow I will need to get them all painted too. I am thinking the Ashigaru helmets will be a different colour just to break up the blue a bit. Yumi will be red, teppo brown and the naginata light brown and silver. The sashimono will be black with white. The helmets will also not blend in with the black too.

I now have three more days at work, not that I am counting 😂

I must admit that I am a little bit excited about the resin printer. I am also going to be working with the children with resin too. They want to make things out of it, so I might as well start them young 😉 (with all safety measures in place of course).