Ghost Archipelago Skull Rock Terrain From Dollar Tree Halloween Decor

   This past week my local Dollar Tree started putting their Halloween decorations on the shelves, and I grabbed one of their plastic skulls to make a skull-shaped rock terrain piece for Ghost Archipelago.

     I began by slicing off part of the lower jaw at an angle, so the skull would sit more upright and less leaned back.

     I then hot-glued it to a CD.

     I also hot glued a bit of pink foam scrap under the back overhang so it wouldn't look quite so unbalanced.

     I then sprayed it with flat black primer; and when that was dry, I sprayed it with stone texture spray paint.

     When the stone texture coat was dry,  I drybrushed the skull with various light grays.   When the drybrushing was dry, I used a little green stuff, some small twigs, and some spanish moss to make a little bird nest to sit in one of the eye sockets.

     I then hot glued various plastic aquarium plants onto the base.

     After that,  I flocked the base and added some more clump foliage and some grass tufts.    Finally, I sprayed it with some Testor's Dullcote matte spray paint.

Shown with a 28mm Reaper pirate figure for scale

     I'm very pleased with how this turned out!   I'm thinking I may like to make some smaller ones as well.

Giant Skeletal Animals at Giant Supermarkets

I was at my local Giant supermarket this past week and saw that they had already started putting  out their Halloween merchandise.  One of the things that caught my eye was a box containing a variety of large skeletal animals; specifically, a spider, rat, and bat. They were priced at $3.99 each.

    While quite large, I think they still have gaming potential as giant creatures, or as fodder for making bone-based terrain.  And they are surprisingly detailed for "toys".  I picked up one of the spiders, shown below with a Reaper 28mm figure.   I know spiders don't really have skeletons, but I thought this might make the basis for a cool piece of fantasy terrain, specifically for Frostgrave.    I'm not sure how I'm going to use it exactly but I have a few ideas in mind.
   And, as I look at the photo above, I'm thinking you could cobble together the bat and rat figures to make a really cool dragon skeleton!

Here is the Spider Skeleton shown with  a 28mm Reaper figure.

Dollar Tree Tombstone Corner Scenery (Finally!) Painted

    Figuring it was about that time that stores start putting out their Halloween merchandise, I thought it was about time I finished panting the Tombstone Corner scenery pieces I bought at the local Dollar Tree store around this time last year.  You can see my original post on the subject here.

   I had painted the gargoyles last year, but I still had the bigger pieces to complete.  They had been languishing on  my workbench for a year now with nothing but a flat black primer coat applied.

So, this past week, I finished them up, and here are the results.  While not the greatest pieces of scenery, considering their $1 price tag, I think they'll do quite nicely to fill out a table. 

 Shown with a 28mm Reaper Bones figure.

     

I'm hoping they produce more pieces for this line this year. But, so far I have not seen any in my local stores.

Dollar Tree "Tombstone Corner" Gargoyles Painted

   I had time this week to paint the Gargoyles I recently purchased from the Dollar Tree's new line of Halloween scenery. See my post here for more details.   I bought two sets, one to use for 28mm gaming, and one to use with my 10mm armies.

For the 28mm ones, I mounted them individually on washers, and painted them in a stone-like paint scheme.

They are shown below with a Reaper Paladin for a sense of scale.

The ones for 10mm, I painted as demons in a red color scheme.

Below they are shown with some 10mm skeletons for a sense of scale.

  Overalll, they are not too bad.  The sculpting is a little rough, but hey, they were only a $1 so I can't complain.  The other problem is that their facial expressions tend towards the "cute", which I found hard to disguise with paint.

Halloween Scenery at The Dollar Tree Stores

Going by a tip I read on The Minaitures Page, I headed over to my local Dollar Tree store to see their new Tombstone Corner line of scenic decorations.  This line is very similar to their Christmas village line of buildings, figures, and scenic accessories.
   I was pleasantly surprised to find some useful stuff.  The buildings are great, and nicely don't have any of the snow glopped all over them like these decorative plaster buildings so often do.  I didn't buy any, as their size is perfect for 15mm figures which I don't game with.   You can see a picture of them at the link above.
I did however find a nice set of gargoyles,  bare trees, a spooky gate, a mausoleum, and a bone gazebo; all of which I think will go super with 28mm.  In the photo below these items are shown with a 28mm Reaper Bones Wizard.

  There were some other scenic items in the store, but I felt they were scaled to big for use with 25/28mm figures.

Giant Bat Swarms from Halloween Confetti

Over the years I have received a number of compliments on my giant bat swarm bases that I made from bat shaped Halloween confetti. I thought I would recreate the project on my blog in the form of a tutorial so others could copy this idea.   While I originally created them for use with 25mm armies, I now employ them with my 10mm forces.  The great thing about giant bats is that the scale is really flexible.

Here is a shot of my original giant bat swarm bases (seen on the bottom left).



And here is a shot of my new version, shown with a 25mm figure

So here's how I made the new giant bat swarm:



Bat shaped confetti from JoAnns.  All their Halloween decorations are already on sale.

I took a trip to JoAnn's Craft & Fabric store, and found this pack of bat confetti, while not the exact style I used in my originals, I thought the shape and size would be good for my purposes.

Step 1, gluing bats to their wire flight stands

The first thing I did was to cut six 3 inch sections of thin wire, and separated out six of the individual pieces of bat confetti.  At the end of each piece of wire I made a small "V" shaped bend, and then bent the "V" perpendicular to the rest of the piece of wire. I then superglued a bat atop each of the little "V" bends.  On some of the bats I bent the wings up or down a little to help give a look of them being in flight.

Adding glue to form the bat's 'body'

After the super glue dried, and the bats were firmly affixed to their stand, I ran a small blob of thick Tacky glue down the length of the body to help give it dimension and make it look less like a perfectly flat surface.

Gluing the bundled wires onto a steel fender washer.  Shown with a 25mm figure for scale.

After the Tacky glue 'bodies' dried, my next step was to twist all the wires together at the loose end, staggering the lengths a little,  to form a little bundled section abut an inch long.  I then made a right angle bend in this bundled portion and formed the bent part into a small semi circle to make a base to glue onto a washer.

After a flat black primer coat.

I then primed the whole thing flat black.  After the primer dried I drybrushed the bats with gray, and added two little red dot eyes on each.
After the painting was done I then flocked the base and finally gave the whole thing a protective spray with Testor's Dullcote.

A shot of the finished Giant Bat Swarm. Shown with a 25mm figure
 

I'm pleased with how this base turned out.  I think in the future I might add a couple more bats to each base to make a slightly more dense swarm.

Halloween Spider Decoration "Giant Spider" Fantasy Unit

It's the time of the year when you can get all kinds of Halloween decorations that are useful for wargaming purposes.  One of those things is packs of tiny plastic spiders. These can easily be turned into "Giant Spider" units for all scales of  Fantasy gaming. 
I recently took a pack I had purchased a couple years ago, and stuck away in a box, and converted them into a great looking unit for my 10mm "Look,Sarge, No Charts: Fantasy, Ancients and Medievals"  armies.

The spiders I got were a pale white-ish green color, so I knew for the start that I would need to spray them black.

A quick coat with some Krylon Camouflage Flat Black, and they were ready to go.  I then glued them on their bases and gave them a fast gray dry-brushing, and some red eyes.

The finished unit.  I got enough in that little pack to make four base and a leader stand.  The bases are 3 x 1.5 inches.

Here they can be seen attacking a unit of 10mm Warmaster High Elves.