Ok, ready for this title? Here we go… Trees, sharing is caring, Trenches and Hawaii. Haha

Right my merry band of blogger buddies have I got a post for you haha.

Whats that you say? You’re a twat IRO and I’m just here for the pictures and beetle soup. Well that’s lovely of you to say but why not have a bit of a read too aye?

Trees!

Not the most exciting thing to make for the hobby but kind of therapeutic and fun. Especially when you make them with someone as cool as my daughter (11).

This kid is very cool. She’s whacky, edgy, a great singer and dancer with a very soft warm side.

Having never made trees before (I usually just cut them down) I decided we’d set up a bit of a production line with me cutting and stabbing holes into cork tile bases and then pushing the trees in and her selecting which trees to use as well as glueing and adding flock to the bases. It was a good system actually and we both had fun. We made quite a few and plan on making more. It took us about an hour to make what we made and the lesson learnt was that I should base coat and paint the bases before adding trees and flock etc.

While at it it I also flocked an aquarium piece/cave thing. We were quite pleased with the end result.

Just for fun we later made this video for YouTube haha.

Sharing is caring.

Years ago when the 11 year old had just started primary school, actually it may have even been when she was at kindergarten, she came home and declared that “sharing is caring.” Very cute and a slogan we’ve used and abused ever since in our household. Eg. I’ll state that there’s only a bit of ice cream left and I want to eat it all. Then, one of my cheeky kids will say “sharing is caring” haha. We laugh and then I send them to bed with bread and water while I gorge myself on the ice cream. Ah it’s good to be King.

Anyway, this is a different type of sharing.

For my part I’ve found I enjoy sharing my hobby over the inter-web but also, I’ve discovered, I like sharing my bits and bobs in a physical and literal sense too.

I’ve sent things to a couple of chaps in the UK and one fella up in the northern part of Scotland. He lives in a cave. I’ve sent a nice little diorama to a lovely lady in the states and I’ve even sent a couple of things to a fellow who lived in Japan for a bit.

I get a real kick out of talking to people from all over the world and also sending things to people all over the world. I can’t put my finger on what it is I like about it so much, it’s just cool.

An equally lovely feeling is when people send me things too.

A little while ago a lady on Instagram messaged me and said she liked my minis and would like to paint one. For no reason at all apart from just the fun of it. She chose the mini, I sent it to her in America, she painted it and sent it back. Here it is.

What a lovely gesture and what a great job she’s done too I’m sure you’ll agree. Much better than I could have done.

Heres her page if you’d like to see more of her awesome work.

https://instagram.com/worshipsworkshop?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=19alygy07ro0l

The next person to send me something has become a hobby hero of mine and sort of a kindred spirit too. Despite this blokes age, we seem to have a lot in common haha. I speak of none other than TIM The Imperfect Modeller, also known as Dave. I’ve always thought it’d be funny to have a dog called David or Simon or Ian.

Anyway, because I’d shown so much appreciation for his work in this blog post of his –

https://theimperfectmodeller.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/kellys-heroes-28mm-artizan-figures-the-october-challenge/

He sent me this chap who is Oddball from the movie Kelly’s Hero’s.

I was so excited to see Daves paintwork close up and let me tell you the man is very, very good at what he does. I think, for me at least, it’s easy to hide mistakes or bits you’re not happy with in photos but having a miniature in your hand and scrutinising it really reveals the skill level of the painter. TIM’s skills are flawless and top notch. I’m sure he’d humbly disagree of course because he’s a git but let me tell you folks the workmanship is spot on.

The other day I received a gift package from another Hobby Hero of mine, Mark Morin.

Now, when I first opened the box and saw some specimen jars…

My heart sank and I immediately thought “Oh no Mark is a nutcase and he’s sent me  stool, urine and sperm samples”. On reading the typed letter I discovered, much to my relief, a description of what was in the jars and also a PS that said “the  specimen jars are unused. Thank Yoda for that!!! Haha.

So what WAS in the jars you’re all wondering. Well, an original Mark I Sphere tank that is fallen in love with when he first blogged about them. See here –

Retro Sci-Fi Sphere Tanks – from a Callaway Golf Ball!

AND some very cool, self cast, zombie spacemen.

Mark wanted me to have the tank because he’d recently watched the lead v plastic youtube id done and wanted me to have the heaviest miniature ever. I don’t know exactly how heavy the thing is but it could hold down a stack of papers no problem. It could also be lobbed at my annoying neighbour and kill him on impact but I promise I won’t do that… yet.

Its such a cool and obscure piece. I hope I can do it justice when I paint it. I have some ideas already but I don’t want to rush it.

The zombie spacemen are very cool too and I’m thinking to adjust a couple of them as they’re all in the same pose but we’ll see.

If anyone else wants to send me free stuff let me know haha and on the flip side of that if anyone would like an original IRO piece let me know too because, after all, sharing is caring!

Trenches!

I cant tell you how excited I am about these next items. Well I can actually, I’m super duper excited!!!! Haha.

When I was a kid I had about four shopping bags full of plastic soldiers that’d id spread over the house in epic battles! Among these soldiers were tanks, planes, jeeps, fences, trees AND sandbag emplacements. I don’t know why but the sandbags were my favourite. I guess they just screamed WAR/ARMY/BATTLE to me. I’d always have trouble clicking the two bits of each set together so Dad would always do that part for me hehe.

As  I grew older and started reading and watching documentaries about war history I became quite fascinated by Trench warfare and the deadman’s land between the two opposing trench positions. Obviously all war is hellish but trenchwarfare, to me, would have to be the most nightmarish. Not only were trench positions bombarded by artillery and air raids but they were also Petri dishes for any number of nasty disease. They were muddy, rat infested, dank places filled with death decay and human misery. Living conditions were atrocious and then after enduring all that the ooor bastards were ordered to charge headlong into heavy machine gun fire. Wow. You and I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like.

Since restarting this hobby I’d wanted some sandbags trenches etc. I’d toyed with the idea of having a huge gaming board where I could dig trenches into foam board etc but this would be an issue when it came to storage. My approach in the last six months has been to use mats instead of boards and the. Have terrain pieces to place around as you would have seen in the last few battle reports. So I searched for trenches and sandbags online and was quite surprised that there wasn’t a huge offering. What I did find was often quite expensive too and I just couldn’t justify it. For instance for a small circular sandbag position. That could fit three minis I was looking at $45. What the actual shit? No thanks. I considered making my own but that would be incredibly time consuming. Then I kind of stumbled onto this website –

http://www.baueda.com/28cama1.html#28010CB

I was blown away but at the same time dubious that maybe the pieces were too small or something. Then, as luck would have it, I found a box of goodies from this company on eBay for sale at a very good price. I emailed the seller, who turned out to be a lovely lady called Penny, and asked if she could send me some more photos. Long story short it turned out Penny lived only an hours drive from where I lived. I went round and had a look and bought everything!

I only picked them up this week and have Bonny base coated them in black so far so no pix for you just now.

Its all modular and all very cool. Once I’ve painted them properly I’ll do a showcase YouTube and blog post. I’m really happy with the size, quality and overall appearance. Really, really cool stuff.

Hawaii.

The last item on the list is Hawaii. Nearly two years ago I started my own garden/landscape/maintenance business. Thanks to my background in sales and generating business I’ve made some good progress. I’m not setting the world on fire but that was never the plan. I’m loving what I do and I’m making the right amount of money. It’s brilliant. The only thing I regret is not doing it twenty years ago. However, as you can guess, starting/running a business isn’t a walk in the park so apart from the odd day here and there and a few days over Christmas I haven’t had a holiday. So now is the time! The wife, kinds and myself are off to Hawaii for ten days and boy are we excited haha. The plan now is to take an overseas trip every two years and in between we will go on some local travel adventures too.

I hope to get over to the UK one day as well to see warhammer world and, hopefully, meet some of you too.

So, needless to say, this means you won’t be hearing from me for a while. I hope you’ll all be ok without me haha.

Take care and be good to yourself.

Remember, a day without laughter is a day wasted.

Cheers

IRO