Flotsam and jetsam

I finally did something with my noodles... *ahem*

I got two nice and weird-looking types of pasta...



...glued them together, painted 'em black and drybrushed them with a metallic goldgreen:



Obviously I still have to paint the hotglue, but I figured I take some pictures now because they show better how this was done. Here's an example how I apply the 'one- bit-of-scrap-metal-glued-to-each-tile-and-dungeon-deco-piece-with-a-neodym-magnet-inbetween' - method:

i.imgur.com/ConGwDc.jpg

You can barely see that the deco pieces are levitating a few mm above the ground. While this effect is neither wanted in play nor intended during the crafting, it not very distracting. And when all is painted up, this should be camouflaged even better.

i.imgur.com/W26pDYU.jpg
i.imgur.com/QfkSAb3.jpg


Poplar twigs, treated with the same color scheme:
i.imgur.com/VaIEIjv.jpg

No problems - both types are pretty sturdy. Nothing broke while I crafted them. Of course if you drop them, they will probably break...

Or you could just boil them for 8 minutes, add some fresh garlic, olive oil, and a few shaves of parmigiano reggiano and BAM! Dinner is served.

I just saw one of miniGirl's new tutorials, where she shows some templates for brick surfaces that she sells on her website.

tutorial:
4-PACK Mix Brick Stencil Templates: www.hobbyhottips.com/4-pack-mix-brick-stencil-templates/

While the price is only 8 USD (and worldwide free shipping, something I learned to appreciate after the Bones II Kickstarter...), I immediately thought what materials to use for this purpose. I guess we'll find some packing materials and other free stuff... Of course I could make most of these stencil template simply by taking a strong sheet of plastic and really exactly working with a cutting knife or scalpell. With a hole puncher you might be able to recreate the round forms.

Mind you, I don't want to cut in her business (I already feel bad for trying to find free substitutes *g*), but I always try to find some way to do things myself before I buy something. I really love her way to create the 3D-effect on bases, and I'll try to recreate that very soon (although I'll probably use clay instead of green stuff, if only for cost savings). I'll try to find a way how to do larger tiles with this, not only small bases. If I could find a way to 'stamp' a 10x10 cm area, I could make lots of modular tiles.

Long story short, let's open the brainstorming!

Here is a tip I found on a different site (not going to link as I'm not sure if that is frowned on).

For those of you that have birch trees near you (or other seed pod producing trees), you can use the seed pods they produce to make tiny leaves. The seeds are always connected to tiny leafy looking parts. They look great for basing minis. There is a company I believe that I does this and sells them.

Thanks for the warning. Here's what I have done anyways...

1) 2 poker chips pasted with modeling paste to get waves. For better durability, the waves are actually pretty shallow; lightsource in the picture is very low and from the side for better visibility
i.imgur.com/eAq4ZSd.jpg

2) the test 'color': 2 different shades of blue; a mix of inkjet printhead cleaning fluid and whatever solved in that stuff (approx. 4 hrs each)
i.imgur.com/QP3Wb68.jpg

3) kind of basepainted with lightblue (regular acrylic color), stippled on only lightly. The left chip has already the first wash of the dark 'ink' on (picture taken a minute after whasing, so it's still totally wet). The right chip shows the basepaint (I want to wait with the washing to see the difference between washing on wet and dried basepaint ). Several pictures taken with different lighting variations.
i.imgur.com/pnQNOWf.jpg
i.imgur.com/XztLoiL.jpg
i.imgur.com/NUEvqWc.jpg   

4) 1st base almost dry, 2nd base washed after basepaint dried. (ink is still wet in the picture)
The difference between both ways: If you wash when the basepaint is still dry, the higher parts - in this case, the wave crests and most of the areas where the color does not pool, i.e. everything that is not a  wave trough - will lose their paint to a degree. Again, two pics provided with different light settings so you can see better what I mean. And this is actually something quite valuable to know (at least for a paint noob like me).
i.imgur.com/8cGuyGd.jpg
i.imgur.com/CtP25Mv.jpg

I'll edit this post to add pics of additional steps.


5) Update after 1 night of completely drying
i.imgur.com/i2DdAI8.jpg
i.imgur.com/XUv0bWR.jpg

Two shots in clear daylight...
I like the left one definitvely better, so in the future I'll apply the wash immediately on the wet basepaint. Still I haven't experimented with the lightblue 'ink', so I will give the right base a good wash with it and see what happens. After that step I will try some white drybrush on it. The left one (my favourite) will be left alone as I am satisfied with it's looks.

The lower one in the center is an earlier water base where I just stippled several colors over each other, also without waiting for each color to dry. Please ignore the glued-on metal scrap - I discovered only after gluing it on that the pokerchips have a magnetic metal core...


Thanks for the link, but I didn't mean to buy a new printer. I have a 10 year old model that is still working - apart from the print head I assume. Noname ink cartridges cost less than 1€ for each color, so I don't have a cost problem. However my next printer will be a color laser printer, should I ever switch. I simply have too many pdf ebooks that I would want to have printed out in a better quality than my old epson stylus color can provide.


Btw: Both the brush and the aluminum can could be washed out completely - the color did not cling to it. So it seems you won't ruin your brushes with that stuff.

...oh, and since this is the 'lets keep those junk and do something with it!'-thread, here's another little thing: If you have cat like me (or a dog), you probably have recognised those aluminum cans. They are perfect for mixing colors in, and can even be washed out times and again.

Some creative upcycling in your dungeon, I like that! I started collecting all kinds of containers (food, cosmwetics, electronics, etc) about 2 years before I came to crafting roleplaying terrain because I was heavily interested in crafting steampunk stuff. Now all these things won't be reborn in another victorian age flux compensator but as dungeon or cave parts. Which is just as well for me.

And since trash & junk is almost everywhere, there are always these tiny voices screaming 'take me with you, use me in some project, save me from going to the landfill!' that I most of the time have to ignore. If nobody looks and I have something with me to put this stuff in, I can take it with me. But that is rarely the case - I don't really feel like rummaging in trash in front of others (especially not in my neghbourhood where those others know who I am), so I have to let 90% of those cool stuff go to waste, quite literally.

But that's the crafter's dilemma I guess...

Found a new pasta type in the supermarket: i.imgur.com/M5lexWS.jpg

Not really cheap (1,60 € = about 3 times the price when compared to the usual low-budget pasta bags), but still nothing that breaks your crafting budget. However if you look at price per piece, it's unbeatable. And you'll never need even half of such a pasta bag, no matter how large you craft your dungeon.

[update/addendum]

I absolutely love these wavy, undulating edges! First thing that came to my mind was a creature that flies through the dungeon.
You can use it in whatever terrain you want:
- give it a sand colorscheme and it can sail over desert dunes.
- a camoflage-like paintjob would make it the horror of a forest or jungle environment
- white and lightblue with a pearlescent finish for an snow, ice & frost theme.
- weird, vivid colors for the plane of faerie
- flying fungus critter, anyone...?

Several demented ideas for such a creature:
1) It's a quite slow flyer that ambushes it's prey. It hunts by shooting/dropping paralysing slime gobs at victims, then slowly lowering itself over the paralysed but fully aware victims and slowly digests them. Has a soft body that is very easy to kill. Paralising slime can be harvested for various ...evil porpuses. Or antidotes, if you want to be generous to your good aligned PCs.

2) As above, but it hunty by simply dropping on its prey and paralises it with the touch of it's underside. Imagine several kg's of some wet, leathery thing landing with a *splash* on your head. Do not imagine how it first paralises you, then slowly crawling over your body and leaving burned skin behind. Ugh...

3) Psionic predator bred by illithid or aboleth. I'll probably go for the latter - I still need some stuff that makes aboleth truly shine. Or glisten, if you will...




Or simply divide one piece of paste lengthwise and glue it on some cave wall or the ground - it makes a great stationary fungus growth.
...even if I like the flying creature idea much better, just for the weirdness of it.

This time it took me only two days to turn newly collected material into ...something. Normally, things sit on my table for weeks and months waiting to be touched by knife, hotglue and paint...

Without further ado: Behold the flying noodles of doom!



If you already have some bases and stands for flying creatures, this takes almost no time at all: Pick some material for the eyes, glue it on (blow on the hotglue until it dries, forming the eyestalks) and glue some piece of magnetic metal (or a magnet) on the belly. Add some texture with hotglue to the back - and you're done. 15 minutes for all six pieces, I would say. Making the fly stands took much longer (approx. 30 min)

Thanks! I find their shapes hilarious, with the undulating sides and the eyestalks. But I'll give them different sets of powers that will quickly erase any trace of laughte from the party's faces. Those guys might be level 11-12 and have fought very powerful foes so far, but that doesn't mean they should smirk at flying spaghetti monsters!

I recently found that all those different pasta typed are incredibly useful for us crafters, and that eye-opener, whenever I'm in the supermarket, I check not only the non-food aisles but also the pasta shelves. Sadly, the more exotic the shape, the more expensive the pasta bags. But we're still talking about less than 3€, so what's expensive for food is dirt-cheap for crafting material. At least that's what I tell my wife...


I used clipped-off plastic fork handles for the flight stands. The tines I saved for later use, probably as icicles for a arctic-themed cave.