Castel Mare diorama update-

I thought I'd show some progress I made on the medieval blacksmith brazier I'm scratch-building for the dungeon portion of the Castel Mare diorama I'm making...I started out with a 3 inch plastic hydroponic grow basket, as shown in Fig. 1. I cut the top of of it, and cut the exposed tines into points (as shown in Fig. 2-3)...they aren't perfect, but they won't have to be...Fig. 4 shows the bling I used for rivets...they are really for fingernails, but they are the size I want and I have some, so that's what I used...LOL. Fig. 5, 6, and 7 shows how I glued them around the basket...very sloppy glue job because the "rivets" are tiny and I ran out of glue gel, and you'll notice the stones don't match...none of this will matter on the finished piece. I also coated the whole thing with clear gesso. Fig 8 and 9 show what everything looked like after the iron paint was applied, and Fig, 10, 11, and 12 show how it looks after the rust effects are applied....I may still dry brush some of the high spots with a bit of orange...but for the most part I'm pretty happy with how it's looking...now on to the innards of the thing...and the stone pedestal I'm making for it to sit on!

Castel Mare Diorama Update

Some Castel Mare updates...tower bling and scratch built stairs! Did the patina and metallic effects on the bling myself...they are actually white resin...the stairs are made of Sculpey and heavily textured and also have several layers of effects and transparent paints.

Castel Mare Inner Wall Lighting Test

Barnabas 1969

Barnabas 1969-recently completed...Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins from the original TV series "Dark Shadows"...this is the original MPC kit with the greatly improved Cult Of Personality Productions replacement head...not totally happy with the eyes but they look pretty good in person...didn't glue his head on in case I get a wild hair and decide to repaint them...the base is something I just blobbed out to set him on temporarily until he takes his final resting place on the big 10+ figure Vampire diorama I'm building....several pictures here under a variety of lighting conditions...MPC marketed the original kit as 1:8 scale, but in truth is more like 1:9 scale

Wall Of Shame-Amazon Prime

I don't rant often....but when I do, it's because I've been badly mishandled...Just an alert-for those of you wasting your money on Amazon prime accounts...the words GUARANTEED TWO DAY DELIVERY...mean absolutely nothing...they can't guarantee anything because they aren't in charge of the delivery...and if your stuff is four or five days later than the two days they've promised, that's your problem...glad I was only paying for Amazon Prime month to month...it made it much easier to cancel and I'm not stuck with having paid them a bunch of money up front...I've had much better luck with eBay...and I've always had things delivered by the "delivery by" date...I'm sticking with eBay...no monthly prime fee, everything is cheaper even with paid shipping, items arrive by the time promised... kind of a no brainier but I had to live and learn I guess...to sum up...Amazon sucks!