Flotsam and Jetsam

[tauster]

'nother new type 'o pasta, found in the same shop that carried those last weird noodles:





No clue what I'll do with them, they just looked too crazy to let them sit on the shelf. If you have any ideas, please fire away!

I still don't like the idea of playing with food, but with hoarding so many types of pasta, at least I can eat some of my crafting materials in hard times.

[tauster]

I just had yet another fly stand idea. See here and here, here, here, here and here for other variants. Oh, and this one. Seems like it simply doesn't get boring to come up with new variants.

Bend a piece of strong wire like so:


Take a 10mm diameter neodym magnet , put it flat on a non-stick surface (baking parchment works great) and cover it with a large flat blob of hotglue. When it is hardened, press the wire loop on top and around the blob and cover it with even more glue.



Glue a smaller neodym on the top of the wire...



...and you're done. Congrats, you now have a modular fly stand that will stick on any magnetic surface, even it if is not completely flat, like this hotglue-textured poker chip that can support a fairly heavy Flumph mini.



The larger the lower magnet, the more stable the stand will be. If your wire is too flimsy, you can always make a wire braid that will support even the heaviest minis. You can also decorate the little base and hide the hotglue if you want.

If you glue small pieces of scrap metal under your minis, you don't even have to take magnetic polarity into consideration (and save a bunch of money because scrap metal is cheaper than neodyms. Just cut apart the lids and bottoms of tin cans for example). and if you paint over the metal chips you won't even seen them anymore, or at least not as much as a magnet.

[angie1985]

I was bummed to come to the end of this thread...looking forward to seeing more creations in the future!

[tauster]

50 tiny, battery-driven LED balls/marbles for 8€

17mm diameter. Seller says they're multicolored, so I think they mean that they cycle through the usual LED color spectrum.

No idea how to turn them off; the article description doesn't mention any switch mechanism. My guess is that you just pull the white plastic bit out, then the LED does it's thing until it runs out of battery power (no battery lifetime stated). In the best case, you could turn both hemispheres against each other and thus turn it on and off, but I don't think so (would have been somewhere in the description if it were the case).

Still pretty cool toys for upgrading craft projects. Any ideas what to use them for?


 

[tauster]

Ever since I first saw Disney's Treasure Planet, I fell in love with those magic sails:




The glowing hexagons are so damn awesome that I couldn't get them out of my head, especially since I'm a great fan of the Spelljammer setting. If I ever make a spelljammer ship, those are the sails I want to have on it. So how to create that kind of texture?

I found a hex-based silicone coaster on ebay a few months back (can't find the link atm) and it has already been useful fo make hotglue hex bases that could be used as basalt (even thoug it's a bit too uniformly flat if you ask me) or maybe a weird ice effect. The silicone is elastic enough so that you could probably roll it over a curved shape that's been stippled with flexible modelling paste or covered with greenstuff. Even not-yet hardened hotglue should work, if you are fast enough and the surface not too large.

I wonder if toilet paper soaked in watered-down PVA could be imprinted with the hex texture, so here's a new little experiment.



Lesson learned already: One sheet of wet TP is so flimsy that you can't do anything with it the sheet ripping. No chance. Either use several layers or take kitchen roll paper that is a bit stronger. At this point I had not even used the PVA...

I want to use the sheet as sail (eventually), so it would be nice if it had a nice curve like a real billowing sail would have. Initial thought: put something under the mat's center so that it hangs down:




The curve isn't nearly enough, so I squeezed the mat between to heavier objects:




Tomorrow we'll see how this works out. I probably have to try several different ways with other types and amounts of paper, more glue, less water, etc. The obvious, but much thicker (and much more expensive!) way would be a thinly rolled-out sheet of greenstuff, but I want to try paper first.

Any ideas welcome!

[tauster]

guppy recently shared his idea of a portable crafting station, including a sketch of a very clever design, see here.


guppy 's design sketch

I'll post a WIP reports here as I go, with no guarantee of getting that thing done anytime soon.
Ideas and questions are welcome, as always.

I got some poplar plywood sheets in different sizes (DIN A2 (420x594x4) and DIN A3 (297x420x4 mm) format) and cut some wood strips for the frame. The space between the shelves should be approx. 5 cm to get the color pots in and out with a little bit of space.




For the vertical side frames of the two small shelves I made slots/dadoes with the table saw to slide the back sheet in. Both top and bottom will be done with the same 4mm plywood, woodglued on and nailed for added stability.




For the sides of the large (A2) center shelve, I wanted to saw groves every 5 cm to slide the shelves into. I need a vertical slat in the center with groves on both sides so the shelves don't sag (4mm isn't very strong). This center slat has to be shorter on both sides to account for the horizontal top and bottom frame slat. I lined tall three up and secured them with painters tape, marked them every 5 cm and sawed away...




As I had already known from sawing the groves/dadoes of the side frames for the small shelves, my blade is a bit thinner (3.2 mm) than the 4 mm plywood, so I have to run them another time over the saw. As I was too lazy to build me a jig, I did it freehand, which gave me a grove that was too wide:



Without a jig every dado would probably be a bit too wide or even slanted, so I abandoned the dado idea. Instead I'll cut small wood blocks that will be glued in as spacers between the shelves.



...and that's how far I got, until real life interfered. As expected.

[erho]

Now this is a great way to start the weekend, with a solid awesome project and a ton of people anxiously hoping and praying all goes well and you post pics ASAP!

[guppy]

Looking forward to seeing the completed station

[tauster]

The LED balls arrived, huzzah!

See here for details.


They are really tiny, thus opening up all kinds of possibilities:



They go through a blinking and color-changing cycle that can't be changed; I'd rather had them not blinking but so what. Can't wait to play with these beauties, I already have a few ideas involving crystals in mind.

[factoriatabletop]

keep it up, i will wait for see the final project.
cheers!

[tauster]

With Easter just around the corner, there's some easter projects on the list, especially for the kids. My boy, who loves crafting away with me in my craft corner almost more than playing with his own toys & games  (...mission accomplished, I'd say!) wanted to make some containers for sowing eastergras.



So we broke out a bunch of tin cans and various containers and started painting them. He favored bold colors, while my cans got some pastel colors typical for easter and spring.



Plus two with a color called 'bamboo' which looks more like a camo green,...




...and which is perfect for the special eastergras planter:




Because everything is better with dinosaurs!



Seriusly, I was itching to make something with those new dinosaur and dragon molds, and when the idea appeared of a Allosaur popping out of a traditional eastergras nest I couldn't resist.

I have no idea how to paint it though: Should I try to make it realistic, use some bold colors or some gentle pastels? What would you do? Remember that either a drybrush or a wash is required to get the texture details pop out.

[margaret]

a light apricot. both bold and pastel, and it would tone well with that green shade you chose

[skunkape]

I would go bold so there is a nice contrast between the dino and the container!

[tauster]

Mar 23, 2018 13:42:02 GMT skunkape said:

I would go bold so there is a nice contrast between the dino and the container!

Mar 23, 2018 5:00:35 GMT margaret said:

a light apricot. both bold and pastel, and it would tone well with that green shade you chose

Thanks for the suggestion, both of you! I followed margaret's advice, and here's how it looks:


(Not sure I'll add the flower...)

Not my cup of tea, really. But it got me set in the right direction: Chosing a color for basepainting is easy; my main problem was that I had no idea what to do after the basepaint. I played around with that apricot, using a red and even a black wash to bring out the texture but neither looked decent enough.

What finally worked was a light pastel blue/grey as basepaint...




...followed by a darkblue wash,...




...followed by a light drybrush with the basepaint again:




I glued the pieces to their cans:




Some more shots from different angles:






Now I have to blend it all together...



I realized that to be efficient, I should have glued after painting. It was OK because I wasn't sure about the colors, but now that I am, should I ever do more cans, I'll first glue everything in place, then completely paint the dino/dragon parts and then basepaint the can. Lesson learned!

[margaret]

Thanks for trying my suggestion and showing us what it looks like. I would have made it a somewhat more intense apricot, but I still like it. I do agree that the blue you used for the rest is a better intensity and goes well with all your base colors.

[tauster]

The first three canosaurs are finished. I really the look for its sheer absurdity, and will probably do more. I wonder how a 'rusted iron' color scheme looks...






Detail shots:

[skunkape]

They look great! The color is a nice contrast and more subtle that what I suggested, which I think works well!

[erho]

Those are perfect!!!

Good work on getting the kids in on it!

[tauster]

Glad you like it.

The most important lesson I learned was, as mentioned, that I should spend at least a moment to plan in which order I'll have to do all tasks. I could have easily saved me half of the time I needed if I had FIRST glued everything in place, THEN painted the dino parts and THEN covered the rest of the can.

Now that I know the process, I'm looking with different eyes at all the larger monsters and minis in my collection: Which one would look great popping out of a can, or other container? Gosh, all those unadorned containers in the kitchen! Imagine different monster parts on each of them! A screaming ghost swooping out of the glass with the coffee, a dessicated skeleton clawing its way up out of the glass with the salt, a vampire fleeing from the garlic salt glass... I swear I'll find a container for a giant space hamster! Not sure my wife will share my enthusiasm though.

Getting the kids in isn't hard - getting them NOT in would be hard.

[tauster]

Got a new toy  ... I mean tool in the crafters toolbox:

Silicone molds for small to outright tiny screwheads and rivets. They're not cheap (12.50€ plus shipping for the bundle) but I guess they're worth it because those screws and rivets are almost impossible to make otherwise, and they add a very nice touch on so many projects and even miniatures.

Of the four different shapes, I think I'll be using only the ones on the left and those on the right. I made a few hexnuts of the largest and second-larges sizes, but my greenstuff was a bit old and didn't cooperate as well as I wanted. I'll probably try it again soon-ish with milliput and hotglue.




Here's how they look, compared to the legs & feet of Lady Forscale (a standard human-sized D&D miniature, for those new to the community).