Friday, November 27, 2015

The Easiest Bricks You'll Ever Make

The Easiest Bricks
You Will Ever Make


I made a video tutorial to showcase a technique for brickmaking for terrain scale (Warhammer or D&D). It involves using a yellow pencil to create a "stamp" to form the bricks into either foamcore or insulation foam.



Alice in Wonderland Chunky Book


Alice in Wonderland
Chunky Book

This was made for a partner on a Craftster swap - we ended up both making miniature books for each other, which was kind of awesome. 























Friday, October 23, 2015

Organizing Your Board Games


Organizing Your Board Games

     If you're like me, you've got at least a few board games sitting on a shelf somewhere. At our house, our dining room is really more like our game room - were we play board games and table top games on our large dining room table.
     When people come over and select a game to play, I decided I wanted it to be as easy as possible to both start playing and to pack up the game for next time. 
     A quick trip to the dollar store (my go-to here in Southern Ontario is Dollarama), and I found two different sizes of storage bags in the crafting isle:

(smallest bag size)

(larger bag size)




    For this example, I'm going to use the  board game Castle Ravenloft because it has a lot of pieces, and you'll be able to use this method for any other games you have.


     You're going to need the rules for the game you're organizing. What you need to do, is pretend that the maximum amount of people are playing the game. For Ravenloft, each character has a set of cards depending on the character you've chosen, as well as a plastic figure.

     This is the "Dragonborn" character, with his cards. I have them sorted out, and then I put this set into the larger of the bags - when we play, people can pick their character and I can simply hand them a bag with what they need to play.


     Smaller bags can be used for other cardboard pieces, as seen here. 


These are card protector sleeves, which you can buy for about a dollar from most comic book stores. Not all games lend themselves to using card protectors, but games that are almost entirely based on cards are perfect for these.

You can see here how neatly they fit the cards, which mean people won't get their Cheetos covered hands all over them, helping the cards last a lot longer than they normally would. This is especially helpful for kids games, because we all know what happens to the cards after your kids have played a game or two!

Here is the game all packed up after bagging all the bits and pieces. Remember to get all the air out of the bags or you're going to have a hard time fitting everything back into the box when you're done.

Now go forth and play some board games!

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Portals - Terrain


I wanted to make some portals for wargaming - be it D&D or Warhammer, I thought it would be a neat idea to not just have standing stones, but an actual "open" portal within standing stones.





I began with pink insulation foam, carved with my utility knife.


I created a "energy" sort of thing using hot glue (tutorial will be posted shortly)


Assembly of the standing stones and texture.


Cut the hot glue to scale


For one of the portals, I carved into the "stone" to make it look more sinister.


Painting the lines red, then covering in black.


Then various shades of grey...


Painted the base and the portal itself - the portal is also painted with glow in the dark paint for effect while gaming.


Ready for flocking...


FINISHED:












Saturday, August 1, 2015

Fallout Shack

FALLOUT BUILDING
D&D Scale 

With the upcoming release of Fallout 4, I got the bug to design some Fallout themed terrain, beginning with a basic building. You might recognize this building if you've played Fallout: New Vegas before - it's the basic skin for most small "shack" buildings like The Grub and Gulp and Deputy Beagles shack in Primm.

The wood is tongue depressors and wooden stir sticks.





The base is foam core


The roof is corrugated cardboard


Friday, July 31, 2015

Standing Stones




Standing Stones
D&D Scale

I was looking at pictures of real life standing stones like Stonehenge and I'm fairly certain I was watching something odd on Netflix when this popped into my head. I've never built them before, but I really loved this build - I can add detail and a wee bit of gore, while still maintaining that D&D feel.



Started out with a pink foam base and randomly cut some large stone-like bits to make up the circle of stones. I didn't measure or anything - I just started chopping and gluing. 


Well, the outer stones weren't enough - I wanted to add a ritual space, and thus the stone ritual altar was born. My husband thinks Aslan belongs on it.


Added some stones and painted the foam to match each other, with a sepia wash.

Even added some kitty litter as small scatter here and painted it to match the rest.


I knew I wanted the center to be dirt and the outer to be more grassy, so I painted the base as such.


Finished, I've added the scatter, some rope around the stones, etc.


The stone altar has two pieces of material (baby wipes) draped over it as an accent - blood drops as well.


Side view


Some trees add a nice accent as well.


I bought the tree bits from Goodwill in the used floral section - I bought a big bunch of stuff for $3 and have already started making use of it.



Top down of the whole scene.