Monday, March 2, 2015

February is over... One bad thing about trying to keep a log of my progress is that it makes the year seem to go by much faster. It really makes you realize how slow you paint when you measure the months in number of figures painted!

Anyway, the good news is that I am still on track with my reasonable goal of at least 10 models per month.

Last month I got in a nice surplus, and completed:

8 Compagnies Franches de la Marine
8 British Regulars (35th, Otway's Regt)
1 British NCO

I also got one small terrain project completed, as I painted up a bunch of the Pegasus log cabins.

Still on track!

So for next month... I have to figure out what I want to do, as I still have a lot more French than British painted, but the only Brits I have prepared and ready to paint are Regulars and those guys took a lot out of me! No more lace for me for a while.

I think I'll go back and paint my French Grenadiers by Crusader. This will give me a complete Languedoc Regiment (well, "complete" in my terms anyway! I am planning on doing 24 models to a regiment).

I'd really like to paint my militia troops from Perry but I don't look forward to spending another Saturday cleaning up mold lines etc. any time soon, so they'll probably wait.

As far as terrain projects, the quest for corn continues. I think I have a solution. I am so excited about it that I might make it my terrain project for the month!

I humored my wife by taking a trip to IKEA on Saturday. This is always an adventure that takes many hours and costs several hundred dollars...

The good news was that I found quite a lot of useful stuff on this trip!

As we were walking through the fake plant section, this one caught my eye:



It's called a "FEJKA"



Just as I was about to give up hope on finding an affordable solution for model corn stalks! I think that the leaves on this one will fit the bill quite nicely. They are not as perfect as the scale corn stalks for model railroad layouts by JTT or Busch, but they are a lot cheaper too!

Here are some shots with the "stalks" removed and lined up next to a 28mm model:




I think they'll be fine. This is about how many you get with one plant:


I bought a few, so hopefully I can make a nice little corn field!

Also, I got another Coir door mat. These are commonly used for wheat fields.... which I have done in the past, but I cut mine up to small sections. I am thinking of leaving this one "as is" to represent a large field:


To give an idea of size, the mat is 6'x4' and the table is 8'x4'

I also got some more trees this month when they were on sale at MicroMark, and bought this mat from Michael's:


I've been needing some bushes to so along with my trees, and I think these will work. They come as individual plants which you can pluck off the backing mat. It came with over 100 "bushes" for the princely sum of 9 bucks, so I think it was a score!

This is what they look like individually:


With some flock on they'll look much better. Might spray them brown first though.

So, just as with the troops, there is no shortage of terrain projects to work on!



2 comments:

  1. Some great terrain ideas. Ironically I live very close to an IKEA (about 1 mile) but very rarely visit. Must pop in and have a look round.

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  2. I've been searching for this plant and can't seem to find it online. What species is it supposed to be? I've found ever other plant made by this company, but not that one. :)

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