OK, so it's actually Sunday here in the UK but it is still Saturday to the West! Tomorrow is the final day of the Challenge, and I'm frantically trying to finish things off in time to get everything photographed and the post written before the deadline.
Today has mostly been cutting up the decals I've made, gloss varnishing the Type S ready for adding decals, painting and gloss varnishing the backdrop pieces, priming and base-coating 1/270 and 1/1000 versions of the Type S (I thought that if I do have time to get them finished, they'd make a great addition to the post - I'll just have to see how things go tomorrow), painting up some snack and drinks machines for the backdrop and adding decals to everything that needs them.
Speaking of the decals, they've been an absolute nightmare. First off, when I went to print them, my inkjet printer wouldn't output black. I knew the cartridge was a bit low, but there should have been enough. Luckily I had a spare cartridge, so I put that in, hit print and...yes, not printing black. After about 30 minutes of going through the cleaning, deep cleaning and print head alignment processes, I finally managed to get it working. Of course, that was about 2am on Thursday night/Friday morning. Yesterday I hit them with gloss varnish to seal the ink in.
This evening I was adding the decals to everything. The small ones for the cargo items were (mostly) good, the ones for the Type S went on nicely. However, I had real problems with the ones for the backdrop, possibly because of the size. The 36 x 56mm ones weren't too bad, the 16 x 96mm ones were a touch tricky, but the 36 x 196mm ones...let's just say that there was a lot of swearing. Luckily I had made sure to print extras of each, which was all well and good until I accidentally picked up one of the boards to move it after applying a top coat of MicroSet, and of course my thumb just happened to land right on top of the softened decal, pulling it up as I removed my thumb. And no spares remaining! I've printed another sheet and varnished them. I'll have to apply that one tomorrow.
Tomorrow (today, I guess) will see me doing lots of varnishing, some touching up around the edges of decals on the ship, some weathering, some more varnishing, photography, photo resizing and then writing a rather long blog post for the submission.
Hope you get everything done in time and posted Tamsin
ReplyDeleteI did - just! :)
DeleteAll these small steps and dedication are needed to achieve greatness! I, too, am doing small things at the moment, but vital ones for my future projects!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It's a relief to get it all done. :)
DeleteHaven't looked in for a while lots of goodies to see. I loved the name of your ship Spirit of Camberwell it amused me greatly. Is the Captain called Mary Datchelor?
ReplyDeleteThanks! :)
DeleteI had to look up Mary Datchelor - I see that there is/was a girls' school in Camberwell named after her.
The ship's name is actually a reference to a scene in Withnail and I - “I invented it in Camberwell, and it looks like a carrot.” . As for the captain's name, I just used the name of the figure from 2nd Dynasty, "Asha".
Tamsin, where to look on your blog to see your Russian SYW army? And what rules do you play for SWY?
ReplyDeleteIf you scroll down the list of Labels, clicking on Seven Years War will bring up all the relevant posts, but will include a lot of WIP.
ReplyDeleteWe use the King of the Battlefield rules, written by a club member. I don't think any copies are available for sale at the moment, but the author is working on a new edition at the moment - should be out later this year.