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We hear it all the time: Pile of Shame. Sometimes we wear it like a badge of honor. And sometimes we feel the actual psychological shame at knowing deep down we’ve over-spent our hard-earned ducats on plastic toys.

I’ve pushed – and I’ll keep pushing – the alternate nomenclature: Pile of Opportunity. And this isn’t some underhanded way to trying to put a positive spin on our little failures of self-control. I say “Pile of Opportunity” with the full acknowledgment that that pile of goodies is perhaps the result of that lack of self control. But it truly is a pile of opportunity and even changing that surface level connotation generates much better psychological vibes – and positive vibes actually help the brain with enacting a little more self-control, a little more discipline. It’s hard to get better or grow when you’re under a constant onslaught of negative vibes. This is just we humans are.

But lurking in most of our mad laboratories, deep in the shadows – or maybe right there in the open, surrounding us like a pack of starving, undead wolves – is an actual Pile of Shame. And today we’re bringing down the sunlight to expose this creeping morass of nurgle-tastic foulness and see if we can smite this self-fulfilling assault on our hobbyist sensibilities and stand tall under the bright light of day!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where your host waxes poetic about mundane topics just because he likes to! And where we sometimes face the skeletons in the closet. And we thank our patrons for their blazing vibes of goodwill and steadfast support! Here’s to you! Much appreciated.

All right, enough theatrics, let’s talk about what I think is the tabletop hobbyist’s – and many others’ – true pile of shame: unfinished projects!

I don’t know a single person who knows a person who doesn’t have unfinished projects. We all tread that boulevard of broken dreams, knowing full well we’re the architect of our own dismay. I think we’ve all heard of some legendary person who finishes every single thing they’ve started, but I think that figure is a myth. Or at the very least, inhuman.

Unfinished projects are, at the very least, marks of learning, of exploration, of some kind of creativity. Failures are always part of any process. You know that as well as I do, despite how much we want it to be otherwise.

But I do feel personally like I get more bummed when I see my unfinished, half painted miniatures. Primed and Ready don’t count – for me. Primed and Ready is just a bonus for the “sit in the damn chair” exercise. <snap> Having a primed and ready batch of miniatures represents, to me, the absence of a significant stumbling block in getting myself to work on something.

Here is my current Pile of Shame. Most of it at least. I have some pieces tucked away that are from twenty five years ago when I was last steeped in the hobby. Like this Necromunda figure from the very first release of that game. I’m pretty sure my pile of shame is the largest it’s ever been, for me. And until I start doing something about it, it only has one potential: to grow. Now this might be a laughably tiny pile of shame to some of you and it might be triggering completion OCD in others. All I know is, it’s mine and I clutch it close to my black heart.

Some of these I got stuck with a growing dislike of how the process was going. Some I’m not even sure why I haven’t finished them. Some, like this undead blood bowl team, were too numerous for me to get my head around finishing and I used my trepidation regarding decals to put ‘em away for a few years.

And here’s a real-time confession of a real-time realization: when I pulled these out of the bottom of the Primed and Ready display case to photograph them for this video, I discovered that I just lied to you, straight to your faces. Which was the result of me lying to myself. Miniatures sitting there in primer – some for more than three years – ARE actually bumming me out a little bit.

But all that said, I do try to plug away at these figures on a weekly basis. I’ve started doing a new thing that’s turned out to be kinda helpful in this regard. This is something a lot of other hobbyists do I think, it’s just taken a long time for me to try it out. Which is typical. Being late to the game, that’s what I do best. I’ve been video chatting with a buddy of mine to hang out while we hobby. He’s coming out of a decade’s worth of WoW fog and finding the joys in the hobby again and so I think we’re both kinda helping each other “git stuff dun” as they say.

And the Pile of Shame is definitely hard to face, hard to knock down, hard to attack. Due to its very nature it represents, mostly, just straight up work and that’s never fun to face alone. Typically we abandon projects because we either lose inspiration or we hit a stumbling block that’s gonna take some effort to overcome, right?

But here’s something to consider: the only successful artist, or craftsman, or programer or writer or filmmaker or scientist or explorer – basically any successful ANYONE – is that person who has pushed through whatever block they faced. I think overcoming challenges is actually the only useful metric by which success can be measured. Every single thing produced by humans is essentially just the result of overcoming challenges. Problem-solving. In other words: perseverance. Sometimes in the face of great adversity. In fact the greater the adversity, the greater the achievement. Usually.

We all know what the “ugly phase” is, right? Every miniature – every piece of art – goes through the ugly phase. It’s just one of the many steps in every process. In fact, it’s probably the very inspiration for the phrase: “trust the process”. As in, you gotta trust the process. To get to the “oh, this is turning out okay” phase, we gotta go through the ugly phase, the self-doubt phase. One is the doorway to the other. And if there’s a door, you know we gotta go through it.

Here’s another idea I had, insofar as launching a strategic plan of attack on the Pile of Shame. We could just use some – or all! – of our Pile of Shame to experiment with! Maybe instead of a Pile of Shame we actually have a pile of Testbed Minis. There’s a video on the new found joy of experimentation coming right up, something I stumbled upon that other hobbyists and artists have been doing the whole time. 

I told you, I’m a late to the game pro.

But one thing experimentation requires are willing – or unwilling – test subjects. Viola! Ask and ye shall receive, right?

Of course, mostly what I’m dealing with is miniatures. But I’ve got folders of shame? I’ve got way more unfinished writing projects, art files, screenplays, way more of that stuff than I do unfinished minis. So not every pile of shame operates the same way, or provides the same means of access, as far as experimentation goes. Because we’re talking minis and models, there are certain ideas that’ll work with THIS pile that may not work the same with other piles. 

But that’s another thing to note, too right? We’ve all got piles of something, piles are a very human thing. Products of imagination really. So, it is what it is. The hobby pile of shame I feel is tied more to the subtle wracking of nerves that financial expenditure can generate. We have to acknowledge that and we have to keep moving. Knowing is half the skirmish, right?

What’s done is done.

So in this hobby, returning to old projects is a pretty doable thing. I mean there’s always Ebay, so there’s that.

This guy here I was always excited to paint, I think the sculpt is so cool. But when I started working on him I didn’t really have anything in mind except yellow wings. And I vaguely thought about trying out some lava rocks on the base. But that’s one of my problems – I often lunge forward on half-baked or vague notions that aren’t fully considered and often I become frustrated by my own ridiculous refusal to think beyond a certain point. But I’m trying to get better at that – at least I’ve identified that issue with myself and that’s a big step right? 

Just say yes. “roll eyes”

The last few years I’ve started trying to become more aware of my own thought process. Better late than never? Doesn’t really matter, ‘cause that’s all I got. It’s slow going, surprise, surprise. But it’s going. And that’s something.

So for this guy here I’ve decided to do some experiments and just noddle around with the paint but I’m 100% going to try the lava rocks thing on the base. Hey, he’s part of the Pile of Shame, if I mess it up, well, I’m just doubling down I guess.

I feel pretty good having identified my real “pile of shame”. I kinda don’t like repeating the name all the time, which just sort of plucks those psychic strings and sends out those little bad vibrations that creep up on our consciousness. Words have power and we’d do well to remember that. The important thing is to try to put a stop to yet another frivolous thing that adds unnecessary weight to our psyches. There’s so much of that that comes with just being human that we shouldn’t go out of our way to add more, if possible. 

But an intrinsic part of being human is the ability to problem-solve. And finding ways to better ourselves, to drill down and uncover the root causes of things. We create our own reality, no? Probably.

So, go make your reality better! Find a way to deal with your pile of shame. Understand that’s okay that it exists and then have fun with those old, half-finished ideas! Or sell ‘em on Ebay! 

See ya!

That’s amazing. A freakin’ work of art! That should be in a museum! Look at the detail. Do they use microscopes when they paint these things? How do they do this?! So cool! 

You’ve seen miniatures, you’ve seen terrain, you’ve always wanted a cool mini for your character on the table – or a group of minis for your fellow players. And if you’re a DM, you might have always wanted to slap down an awesome monster mini so you can tell you players that yes, yes it does reach you with its flying speed. <eee face>

Okay, I don’t know if you’re a player or a DM. I don’t know how old you are, I don’t know how long you’ve played DnD or other tabletop RPGs. The only thing I might know is you’ve always, somewhere in the back of your mind – or right up in the front of that thought-cage – you’ve always wanted to paint a miniature. Or at least flirted with the idea.

But you haven’t taken the leap. You’re standing on the edge of that diving board and looking out at the great big Olympic-sized pool and it’s a little bit overwhelming. Where do you start? You know you need paints, that’s obvious, but … what paints? How many paints? What paint brushes can paint something so small? How do you even see that tiny-assed miniature in your hand? How much money does this hobby cost anyway? What if you suck at it?

You’re asking all the questions and I can promise you one thing, and one thing only: I’ll have SOME answers. Let’s see if we can get you started on one of the most rewarding journeys a tabletop gamer can take.

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we tackle an iceberg one boat at a time. And we thank our patrons for supporting such dark humor on a protracted basis, much appreciated, kind humans. Or should I say “enablers”?

So you wanna paint a miniature. Or you dream about painting a bunch of miniatures. Or “minis”. Mini is the technical nomenclature for what used to be called, by my group of nerds anyway, back in the previous century, “figures”. As in, “leave me alone, I’m painting figures!”

But you’ve never painted one. In fact, you may not have ever painted anything in your life! Just like me when I started painting figures.

So, let’s talk about what exactly one needs in order to paint their first miniature. And how much stuff costs and give you some options on how to jump into this big old pool.

I’m gonna go with a plug-n-play, modular sorta package approach to this whole endeavor, hopefully that’ll make things clear and informative and reinforce the idea that these are all just suggestions and you can make any combination work.

I’ve got three tiers plus one that I’m gonna break everything down in. And already you’re like, dude, three plus one, it’s already confusing! I get it, but you’re gonna get it in just a second. The tiers are “Dipping A Toe”, “I Think I’m Gonna Like This”, and “Cowabunga!” plus “Capital B Basics”. Which is the tier we’re kicking things off with. ‘Cause this is the fundamental gear you need regardless of whatever else you decide to purchase, beg, borrow or steal. 

Tier Zero, Capital B Basics starts with Number One: A place to paint. You’re gonna need a desk, table, porch, TV tray, sideboard, card table, stack of bricks, clearing in the pile of laundry on your bedroom floor, whatever. You need a place to paint. Think about whether or not you’re going to have to pack your stuff up in between painting sessions or if you’ll be able to leave it all set up. If you’re gonna have to pack it up, which is sometimes unavoidable, maybe keep one of those Amazon boxes I know you’ve got, and you can put all your stuff in there in between painting sessions.

Number Two: Lights. You gotta be able to see what you’re doing. This sounds like a giant duh, but it’s not. You’ll need some sort of desk lamp, something that can get a light source close to your miniature, unless you’ve got like industrial overheads in your house or garage. There are lots of lamps out there and a lot of them will work just fine. Investing in a cheap extension cord is highly recommended too, just to make things a little easier on you, give you some flexibility. The only real factor you need to try to get is cool or daylight colored bulbs or LEDs. You CAN paint under tungsten light – or “warm” light, which is typically labeled as 3000k, which stands for kelvin, and now we’re balancing on the edge of a rabbit hole we’re gonna refuse to go down – but if you have to, you can paint under warm light. But daylight – or cool light or 5000 kelvin – is much better at rendering color for you. Warm light will cause colors to look a bit different than what you expect, that’s all.

Now there’s a ton of minutia we could go into about light quality, but right now, we’re just talking Capital B Basics. These are the lights I’ve been using for around six years. They’re relatively cheap and the long bar format means that with two of them you can get some decent coverage across your painting area. If you’re gonna use a light with a standard lamp socket, consider picking up the highest wattage LED bulbs you can find – within reason! – they’ll give you a lot more light than the typical 40 or 60 watt equivalent bulbs.

Number Three: Paint water cup! For rinsing brushes while you paint. You could fork out some ducats for some dumb thing marketed as an actual “paint brush cup” or you could just be normal and grab a glass or jar out of your kitchen. Just make sure you consider the “tip-over” factor of any vessel you choose. You’ll want something with a flat bottom and, preferably, bottom-heavy. I’ve used plenty of different containers, but the one I currently use has been my favorite. I think it was originally sold as one of those glass vases (or vahzez) home decorators fill with glass beads or decorative rocks or something. It’s square, which adds to the overall stability, and it’s relatively heavy too. Really, though, you can use anything that’ll hold water.

Number Four: Paper towels. This isn’t exactly eco-friendly but then neither are plastic miniatures and all the packaging they come in, right? Tabletop Alchemy, where we call things what they are. Sometimes. And you’re not gonna go through paper towels at some kind of crazy rate, you just need ‘em for wiping brushes on. I prefer the type that are perforated into half-sheets, this is the perfect size, for me, to fold in half and in half again and you can use all four sides as you fill it up with color and water and it’ll fit right next to the next thing in the Basics list – 

Number Five: Paint palette. You don’t want to paint right from a paint pot, or more likely, you’ll have a dropper bottle that you’ll need somewhere to drop paint onto and thin it with a little water. Or mix colors or whatever. If you’ve never painted miniatures, you can find a ton of videos on why you want to avoid putting undiluted paint on a model. But we’ll cover that in a basic painting tutorial at some point too. 

Now, your palette can be literally anything that doesn’t absorb water. We’ll talk about wet palettes in a bit but you can absolutely use a cheap plastic palette from Hobby Lobby or a piece of tinfoil or a ceramic or glass plate from your kitchen or a piece of glazed tile from a hardware store. This one costs like a dollar.

Number Six (optional): Eye-aid. Or focus aid. Or magnifiers for your peepers. If you have good eyesight, get outta here, I’m jealous. But if you do have good eyesight and can see sharp enough to paint a mini unaided, then I recommend doing so. But if you need some magnification – like I do now – there are all kinds of flawed headset things out there, contraptions can you strap to you face but I’d recommend starting with reading glasses. You can get super cheap non-prescription glasses on eBay up to +6.00. I’m currently using a pair of 4.5s but I have 5s and 6s on hand. Regular glasses are just way more comfortable than the headset things, unless you need like some crazy magnification. You can test out reader glasses at most drugstores and get a sense for what power you might need. Bear in the mind though that most retail stores aren’t gonna much beyond 3.0s. 

Number Seven: Glue. Super glue, AKA CA glue, is a pretty universal staple in any tabletop hobby endeavor. And medium viscosity is totally fine, whatever you can pick up from wherever. You may also want to have some PVA glue that can be useful for certain things but if you have to assemble a miniature, you’ll use the super glue. We’ll touch on specific plastic glue later on. 

Number Eight (another optional one): Hobby surface. You’ll want something akin to a desk blotter to work on. Desk blotter. I bet you have to be of a certain age to know what that is. Basically you just want something you can put down to protect whatever surface you’re working on. A piece of cardboard, a chunk of foam core from the dollar store, an old wood plank, a piece of craft paper, whatever. I mean, you know what you have, if you’re okay with possibly spilling paint on it, then carry on soldier. A lot of us use cutting mats, which is a nice way to work but it’s not a necessary expenditure. At the basic level this is just about protecting your work surface.

Number Nine: X-acto knife. And replacement blades. Don’t touch the pointy end and be deliberate when using one of these ridiculously sharp tools. They are extremely handy and you’ll probably definitely want one of these in your gear box.

So, I think that covers the Capital B Basics. Now we’ll get into some cost plus enthusiasm-based tiers. Again, one thing to keep in mind is that all the elements of this breakdown are mix-n-match, everything’s optional and really just suggestions. I’m just trying to give you an idea on how to begin.

Tier One – Dipping A Toe

This is for those of you out there either on a super tight budget or uncertain about whether or not you even like the idea of painting a miniature. Or both.

First item on the list is, of course, a miniature. I would suggest a plastic miniature from Reaper Minis or a 3D printed miniature from Etsy. The main reason for this is the likelihood of getting a miniature that doesn’t require assembly, other than maybe gluing it to a base. But, you know, find a mini you like and take the plunge. There are links to some miniature manufacturers below but you can also maybe visit a local tabletop game store to find something you can look at in person and take right home and get to work.

Item Two: Paints. So this is where controversy begins, but we’ll put on that +4 armor of opinion and steamroll ahead. This is just a guide from one nut’s perspective, remember. Now, from the perspective of having no paints at all, trying to work with a budget and decide what colors to buy is always a challenge. When you’re dipping a toe you don’t want to spend too many hard-earned ducats! So this is what I suggest: grab a black, a white, a silver, a dark brown, and then pick two or three other colors you might want to paint on the figure. 

Now, what BRAND of paint should you buy? To be honest, at this tier level, any paint line designed for miniature painting is fine to go with. I wouldn’t recommend Games Workshop or Citadel paints but only because of their retail cost, the actual quality of their paints is decent. A lot of folks recommend The Army Painter brand for budget-conscious painters, but I personally don’t like their paints very much and you can get Vallejo paints for basically the same price. But for affordability, those would be the two brands I’d look for first. Now, all these companies are going to have enormous color charts – meaning they’ve got hundreds of colors. Just pick out a couple colors you like. Both The Army Painter and Vallejo market boxed sets, so a basic colors set could be the way to go. If you go with Vallejo, I would recommend their new formula Game Color line, because they have brighter more saturated types of colors, perfect for sci-fi and fantasy miniatures, and Army Painter does have a great selection of colors.

Item Three: Brushes. Here, for the absolute budget-conscious toe-dipper, I suggest something like this. If you can drop a couple more bucks maybe get two different sizes of these. The most important thing you want from your brush is a point! And most big box art stores – Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, etc. – will have 50% off sales on their brushes like every other week. If you’re getting cheap brushes, you can a couple different sizes just to play around with. Side note: it’s easy to think that to painting tiny details requires a tiny brush, but that’s not true – it requires a fine point on whatever brush you’re using. Larger brushes – and I’m talking like size 1 here or size 2 – with a great point are easier to use than triple zero sized brushes.

Item Four: Primer. Now this one has some variations that depend on what material your miniature is made of. If it’s metal or resin, you’ll need primer of some kind, but if your miniature is from the Reaper Bones line or is regular injection molded plastic – that usually means it comes on a sprue – you don’t even need primer. Most of us do prime our plastic miniatures but that’s almost more for visual aid and artistic choices than anything technical. 

Now, most paint brands will sell some kind of small bottle of brushable primer, like this by Vallejo and this by Reaper. You can also buy a can of aerosol primer – what we affectionately refer to as “rattle can” primer. Army Painter has a bunch of colors to choose from, or you can get a can of primer from a hardware store, brands like Krylon or Rustoleum are fine. This stuff is totally usable, but if you want to pony up a few extra ducats you can get a slightly smoother result from one of the hobby brands. For just starting out, and if you only want to spend money on one color of primer, I’d recommend going with white. Black would be my second choice, colors lay down brighter over white but again, we’re just talking starting out here. 

Now, you’ll only want rattle can primer if you’ve got an outdoor, well-ventilated space you can spray this stuff in. If you don’t have an outdoor space, if you live in an apartment like me for example, the brush-on primer is the way to go.

Item Five (optional): I’d recommend these three specific bottles of what we call “washes”. Again, every paint brand sells some kind of wash, which is essentially diluted paint in a clear medium. What does that mean? It just means it’ll do this cool thing of settling color down in the recesses of a miniature and leave the raised areas only slightly tinted. And the greatest thing about a wash is that you literally slap it on, no precision necessary. This is a super easy, beginner way of adding depth and shadow to your miniatures. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend putting these washes over areas of a miniature you’ve painted that you want to look “bright and clean”, but a typical way we use washes is by putting down a base coat of color, putting the wash on and then after that dries, going back with the original color to add some highlights to the raised areas. It looks pretty cool and when I started out painting minis, I had no idea what a wash was and I really wish I had learned about them sooner. So, you can make your own washes by watering down your paint but if you have a few ducats to spare, I’d recommend these three Shades from Army Painter, they are pretty great for beginners. 

All right, let’s kick things up a notch. Maybe you’re like “I’ve wanted to paint miniatures for a while” and you fancy painting up minis for all your players, or maybe even some bad guys for your party to fight. This tier might set you up for success in the long run.

The “I Think I’m Gonna Like This” tier tackles some larger financial investment, but is also a bit more detailed as far as the hobby goes. It should give you a decent base from which to advance pretty quickly, along with all the youtube painting tutorials you’re gonna watch.

But let’s insert a Public Service Announcement here: watching painting tutorials and actually painting your miniatures are two very different things. Watching tutorials is optional and painting minis is not – actually painting is necessary for learning and growing as a painter. Let’s not confuse the two.

Building on the Capital B Basic tier, we’ll start with 

Item One: Miniatures. You might go for a boxed set of bad guys or a cherry-picked selection of 3d prints for heroes. There’s a lot to choose from in this little magical world of ours and that’s a whole video topic in itself. Maybe three or four videos. But here are some places to start for sets of miniatures. And of course links are below.

For boxed sets, you might check out Northstar Miniatures, they have a pretty big catalog in all different kinds of genres. Check out the stuff they have for Frostgrave and Stargrave and Oathmark along with all their other stuff. If you’ve got a little bit more of a budget, check out Games Workshop, and don’t miss out on the smaller boxes they sell in the Boxed Games section. Both of these companies produce plastic miniatures on sprues that require assembly and you may want some plastic glue. We’ll touch on that in a bit. 

There are probably hundreds of miniature companies, so I’m sure some simple google searches for plastic fantasy miniatures will return tons of results. But when you’re searching for boxes of bad guys, you might want to search for terms like “skirmish game miniatures” or “wargame miniatures”, you’ll find things sold as “units”, which means you’ll get 20 goblins or orcs or elves in a box. 

For individual heroes I tend to stick with Etsy for really cool 3d prints, just searching up race and class. But there are a ton of companies out there. 

What if you’re looking for a monster for your table? Again, some of the bigger war-game companies like Games Workshop and Privateer Press have some great offerings, but you can also go right back to Reaper Miniatures of google search for DnD monster miniatures or dragons or whatever you’re trying to find. Finding just the right miniature is almost a side hobby in and of itself!

All right, Item Two: Paints. This time I’ll give you some of my personal preferences, but again, there’s tons of discussion on this topic out there and thousands of reviews and comparisons, but I’ll say this: if it’s paint designed for miniature painting, you probably aren’t gonna go wrong. The suggestions I’m gonna give you are typically easy to find in local game stores and online retailers – and one suggestion that might warrant some further exploration on your part.

Reaper Master Series, available in sets or as singles. Vallejo, especially their “New Formula” Game Color paint range. AK Interactive 3^rd Gen, these have the best caps in the business, which sounds like a dumb metric, but they are pretty cool. The Citadel Contrast paint line and its direct competitor, Vallejo Express Color. These last two are a special type of paint and I think it’s actually pretty interesting stuff. Ostensibly they are formulated so you can kind of use them like washes and get pretty striking results without too much effort. They are definitely fun to use but just keep in mind that they don’t function like normal paint. It would be good to watch a tutorial or two of someone showing how they operate. Vallejo Express Colors are much cheaper than the Games Workshop paints, but Citadel’s line has way more colors. Which ultimately may not really matter. My only extra suggestion is that if you grab some of these “contrast” paints as they’ve kind of collectively come to be called, always grab a bottle or two of whatever Medium goes with those paints. That way you can thin out a color if you want to lessen the intensity for any reason. You can always put on multiple coats to build up thinned out color. But we’re rabbit holing into painting tips and that’s just not what we’re doing today. Today’s all about the gear.

Item Three: Brushes. Here we’re going to step gingerly into some more controversial – or, you know, discussion-worthy – territory. Cheap synthetic brushes are always good to have on hand, but for this tier I’m going to suggest you pick up one or two more expensive, but in my personal opinion, worth-it Kolinsky sable brushes. There are quite a few expensive brands out there that make really nice sable brushes, but my suggestion is to call up Wind River Art Supply – their site is old-school, you can’t order from it, you have to call them to place your order, but the owners are super nice and they ship stuff super fast and packed well. AND it’s the only place you can really get Rosemary and Co brand Kolinksy sable brushes here in the US. You can go directly to Rosemary and Co in Europe. Specifically I recommend the Series 33 #1 brush with the short handle, but the series 22 and series 8 are very similar.

I’ve also heard good things about Monument Hobbies special synthetic brushes but I haven’t personally tried those yet.

Couple of tips for taking care of your brushes: store them in a way that doesn’t put weight on the tip – like I used to do when I was just a savage. Do your best to not let paint fill into the ferule, this part here. Paint that gets in there will dry and force the fibers apart and eventually split the tip of the brush so it won’t be able to hold a point. And a point is the literal point of these brushes, you wanna keep it sharp and healthy. Pick up a little container of brush soap. Doesn’t matter what brand, it’s just a soft detergent and you can clean your brushes periodically, keep ‘em in good shape. But again, these are tools, so don’t be afraid to use them. But that’s also why having a few cheap synthetic brushes is a great idea, you can use those for a lot of stuff and not worry about beating them up.

One last suggestion is picking up some cheap makeup brushes from Amazon or the dollar store. You can use these for a technique called “dry brushing”, and if you google that, you’ll find a billion tutorials on it.

Item Number Four: Primer. Feels like we were just here. In fact, let’s just pull over the Primer bit from the “Dipping A Toe” tier, it’s basically the same for this tier. But if you’re thinking of painting a bunch of miniatures and you want to be able to prime them fast, you’ll want to go with a rattle can, if you can spray outside where fumes won’t kill you or your pets, OR … you might pull in the Primer Item from the next tier. But of course brush on primer will still work and remember, if you’re painting injection molded plastic miniatures, you don’t HAVE to use a primer.

Item Number Five: Palette. For this tier, I’m recommending you go with a wet palette. There are a lot of expensive ones out there that look pretty slick, and they probably are, but don’t bother with those. Jump on Amazon, pick up this Masters wet palette and a package of antibacterial sponges like these. And a roll of your preferred brand of parchment paper. When you get that palette inside your house, throw that yellow sponge away (or keep it for something else), replace it with one of your new antimicrobial sponges – and put a couple of US pennies in the corners – or if you have some copper wire for some reason, put a couple pieces of that in the palette – copper cuts down on the time it takes for mold to grow in this thing. Then cut some parchment paper into pieces smaller than the sponge, fill the palette with water so the sponge is soaked but not entirely submerged and lay down your parchment paper. Good to go. When you’ve filled the paper with paint, toss it and put down another piece. 

You can always use one of Capital B Basic tier’s palette suggestions too, and you might want both to experiment with. The wet palette keeps your paint workable for a lot longer than a dry palette, that’s really the bottom line.  

Item Number Six: Washes! Again, almost every paint brand has some kind of wash line or you can make your own by thinning your paints with water. That takes some practice to learn how to do just right, but it’s a thing. There’s a bunch of paint tech surrounding washes and for me, I just drop the cash for ready-made washes. Games Workshop has an excellent line of washes, and so does Army Painter. They’re just handy but not required.

Item Number Seven: Painting handles. For all tiers I recommend getting a package of these. And maybe a package of matching lids. And some poster tac. There are several advantages to these versus other types of painting handles, like the ones sold from Games Workshop – ridiculously engineered – or these other things, there’s quite a few out there. Essentially, you will want to fix your miniature onto a separate object you can hold while you paint it. The reason I recommend these little cups is they come in two sizes, they are super cheap, disposable but also comfortable to hold (for me anyway) and they are reusable. Unless you melt it with something, you can just keep putting miniatures on them and you can also of course use them as actual containers for things. I end up using them for holding basing material like flock and dirt and sand.  Anyway, there are specific products out there called painting handles, just keep in mind you want something that won’t tip over when you set it down.

Item Number Eight: Clippers and sandpaper. Get a pair of clippers you can use on plastic and then don’t use them on anything except plastic. That’ll keep ‘em sharp enough for a long time and you won’t ding the blades on metal. Clippers make cutting models from sprues much easier than using an xacto knife or twisting the parts off with your dorito-stained fingers. Pick up a cheap pack of 250 or 320 grit sand paper and tear off a small square when you need some and you can use this to smooth out the miniature where you cut the sprue off, or these things called mold lines. You don’t have to do this but once you get into painting you’ll probably wish you had. 

Item Nine: Basing materials! So miniatures typically stand on round or square bases and you might want to add a little bit of texture or grass or leaves or rocks. You can easily do this with some dirt or sand from your backyard or little sticks or pebbles or clean cat litter even, but there are also tons of companies that sell what’s called flock and static grass. You don’t need very much of this to start out with and you can water down some PVA white glue, put it on a base around a miniature’s feet and sprinkle this basing material all over it. Let it dry and you could even paint over it if you want or just let it be as is. Decorating the bases of your miniatures really adds a lot to their overall look. Check out the company Woodland Scenics online or in model shops, Army Painter sells flock and basing material, so does AK Interactive and Vallejo. There’s a lot of stuff out there. But don’t go ham at first, just pick up a couple things you think might work and then after you’ve worked with some stuff and done some more research you’ll start to see where you can save money from brand to brand. 

Item Ten, last but not least: Plastic glue. Some people like to use superglue to glue up their plastic models, and that’s fine. You’ll need super glue for resin and metal miniatures for sure. And you can definitely use it for plastic models but plastic glue, to me, is just nicer to use on plastic miniatures. It melts plastic together. This is the brand I use, but there are different brands, like everything else. Just stay away from the thick Testors stuff that comes in tubes – their liquid plastic cement is probably fine, I just never understood the thick goopy stuff. 

All right, this brings us to tier 3, the “Cowabunga” tier! You’ve got a big appetite for miniatures and you’ve got a budget to match. Although I think everyone who enjoys mini painting will aspire to this tier over time. Really, this tier is just a single big ticket upgrade: and that’s an airbrush and an air compressor. 

This pair of contraptions is very useful – at the beginning of your mini painting journey it’s useful for priming miniatures, but from there you can head down the airbrush rabbit hole as far as you want. Airbrushing zenithal highlights with primer is a perfect beginner exercise for starting out and from there the sky’s the limit. 

Here’s a set I recommend to start out with. Now, I’m not an experienced airbrusher by any means, but because I’ve got the compressor, I can upgrade to any airbrush I want in the future and in the meantime I can practice airbrushing as much as I want with this cheap airbrush. There are smaller, cheaper compressors that don’t have a tank like this but I think it’s worth investing the extra ducats to get one with a tank. The tank allows the compressor to run periodically rather than constantly the whole time you’re working, which in the long run is much better. I live on the second floor of an apartment building and this thing is quiet enough to not bother the neighbors.

Airbrushing acrylic paint is really tame fume-wise – and I’m pretty susceptible to any kind of chemical fumes – but I still wear a simple dust mask when I run the brush. If you’re gonna spray enamels or lacquers, you’ll 100% need either a genuine air scrubber or filter system but I’d say just don’t bother with anything non-acrylic until you’re much more familiar with painting in general. And really you could go your whole painting career without ever putting anything non-water based in the airbrush. 

Working on miniatures means the overspray isn’t really much of an issue and plenty of painters just spray airbrush right at their main hobby desk. But I like to spray into a backdrop just because. I made a very simple “booth” out of foam core and tape that folds up flat for storage. You could use a cardboard box if you wanted to. 

A lot of paint brands sell an “airbrush” line of paints, which is just pre-thinned paint, because you’ll always thin whatever you’re putting through the brush. But I’d suggest just learning right out of the gate how to thin your paints for spraying. Or, you know, buy some airbrush paints – you’re in charge!

You’re also gonna want some varnish, specifically some matte varnish. Clear coats can protect your minis a bit more from abrasion but one of the best things about putting down a matte coat is that it unifies the finish of all the paints and washes you’ve put on the miniature as well as sealing it. And you can always continue painting over a clear coat too, as long as it’s had time to fully dry. 

I use this Mecha matte varnish from Vallejo and primers from Badger Stynylrez and Vallejo but there are lots of brands to choose from. And remember, you’ll probably want to thin any varnish or primer you spray as well, so you can get a bottle of airbrush thinner and use it for pretty much everything. There are youtube channels that discuss how to make your own homemade thinner for much cheaper, so that’s an alternative to keep in mind. Just make sure you stick with acrylic varnish, not polyurethane, which seems to be cropping up more for some reason. Unless you know what you’re doing of course.

Side note, I keep some gloss and satin varnish on hand too just for, you know, whims. You can mix gloss and matte varnish to create your own custom satin varnish if there’s a particular look you’re going for. Personally, I use gloss only as a finishing effect on certain parts of a miniature if I want that look, overall most folks would agree that a matte finish is really the best looking finish for a miniature or model.

So, I’m 100% sure I’ve forgotten to mention something in this ludicrously long video and I’m 100% sure you, as a new miniature painter – are gonna have questions. This video is really just intended to give you some clear advice on what materials and gear to collect before you start painting your first miniature, but as I’ve mentioned multiple times, you should definitely feel free to mix and match and collect stuff as you see fit or as needed. 

One last piece of advice: when you paint your minis, don’t sweat making them perfect or get upset if the first few don’t turn out the way you envision. If this is new to you, it’s new and you gotta just try it out. Don’t get discouraged, everything takes practice. And perfection … doesn’t exist. Here’s proof. <snap>

So, set up your work space, grab a mini, and just. have. fun.

See ya!

Frustration, failure, punishment, embarrassment, these are a few of my favorite things. These are also all potential symptoms of the famous FFT. First BARKing Time.

So let me tell you a little story, a tale as old as time.

A man walks into a workshop. He sits at a table cluttered with the tools of his trade. He takes a deep breath and cracks his knuckles. For he is to attempt this day that which he’s only seen others do. Did he study these other artists’ techniques? Did he pour over the examples of his betters? Did he prepare and plan for this singular new exercise? Did he pause to consider his own fundamental lack of understanding?

Nay! He is simply deciding to leap without looking! The best kind of leap.

Alas, the laughter from the crowd haunts him still.

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes your host tests his resolve – or perhaps rather tests his capacity for embarrassment. And he thanks his patrons for supporting this exercise in inanity.

So when I happened to glance into the Pile of Opportunity: Primed and Ready Edition display case back when I was putting Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars away and grabbing that dragonborn to paint up – well, to be honest, I had initially grabbed this miniature to paint up in a leisurely way. And thanks to how this went, I ended up grabbing that dragonborn and that one became the subject of the video at the beginning of the month. 

Yeah, this pair of videos got real squirrelly. As you’ll see soon, the dragonborn would have made a much better model for today’s exercise and this model would have been fine for the earlier video. 

Have I talked enough nonsense at you yet? 

All right, so I’m always thinking about how I want to improve my painting, and about techniques I want to learn or get better at and how every miniature presents on opportunity. The other side of the Desire coin is Action. If we always leave this coin face up and never flip it over to the action side, well, you get it. Wishing for something never generates results. Actions always generate results. Of some kind, right?

So I told myself – it’s time. You’re gonna try out Non Metallic Metal.

Now, quite a few of you, dear viewers, have expressed a mild appreciation for how I tend to show my mistakes and learning process in my videos. This video might be taking that sentimentality a bit too far, just a warning. Dear viewer discretion is advised.

We’ve all seen examples of non-metallic metal in miniature painting. Do I think it’s super cool? Yes I do. Do I think it’s necessary outside of highly competitive painting competitions or display pieces? No. So why do I want to try it? See question number one.

So I started out painting the figure’s face and actually doing a little shading on it and darkening the eyes, etc. At this point I’m still thinking about color scheme, ‘cause I have no idea going in as per usual. I thought I’d do her cloak up in red and I’ve never tried out this Sigvald Burgundy Contrast paint so to see what’s it like, I painted the whole cloak in it thinking I’d highlight it up to red. This Contrast color turned out to be really nice, I dig it. 

And then some Basilicanum Gray for her actual clothing under the armor, I just kinda wanted that stuff to go dark and let the cloak and her hair and armor be the brighter parts of the model. A mud brown for the leather bits, which of course I’ll wash down later and some wildwood for her boots, for a little bit of a darker leather look. Then out of habit I went in with a black contrast paint to base coat all the armor. This was probably not the way to go for doing non-metallic metal, but we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

I put some red down on the leather wrappings on the haft of the warhammer still thinking I was going to take that cloak up to red, but you’ll see how that panned out later too. I highlighted the leather in preparation for the dark brown wash, again this is pretty typical leather process, I’d like to get better at leather but this has become such an easy few steps that it’s hard for me to think outside my own box. I threw this wash onto the hammer haft as well, cause I was not liking the red against that purple or burgundy cloak color.

Choosing hair color is another constant stumbling block for me but I thought I’d try out a realistic blonde, so foregoing my usual noob choice of yellow, I went with a sandy tone. I’ve done this once before on a miniature and it turned out really nice. The only issue I have is the lack of contrast between her skin tone and the hair color, but hey, one thing at a time, I’ll try to consciously get better at painting faces sometime in the future. 

I’m not sure why I went with a gray on the hammer, but I thought I’d be able to glaze in some depth to it later with some darker blue-ish tones. 

So now I came to the whole point for this miniature, this non-metallic metal thing. And here’s where we can discuss a number of things.

One, how watching hours of youtube painting examples and tutorials is a substitute for exactly zero hours of actual painting practice.

Two, there are typically additional concepts incorporated into any given specific technique, like for non-metallic metal (or NMM as we in the hobby call it), we need a grasp of how light interacts with materials and objects. At least on some kind of basic level.

Three, painting of any kind, even most digital painting and illustration, is partially a physical skill and getting good at anything physical requires physical practice.

So I obviously have no idea what I’m doing here. The first thing that occurred to me was that this was a terrible miniature selection to try learning nonmetallic metal with. It doesn’t even have a sword, which is typically a long flat surface that makes for, arguably, the best object to paint NMM with. But no, I’ve chosen a figure without a sword and lots of intricate armor that’s full of small details and filigree. You can see that my planning ahead or actual thought process is microscopic at best.

One major issue is that I can’t visualize what this piece of armor should look like as real steel. I know that the general format for non-metallic metal is all about high contrast – small bright highlights graduated into very dark shadow, roughly speaking. I also know – keyword, academically – that highlights and shadows are about describing 3D volumes.

These armor pieces have so many ridges, I have no idea where highlights should go. Let’s be honest: if they’d been perfectly smooth slabs of metal, I’d still have no idea where to place highlights. In the end, because I’m working off this black base coat, I’m not even painting non-metallic metal, I’m much more painting this as if it were black enameled armor (you know, as if the miniature were wearing black armor).

So maybe I should have base-coated the armor in a steel gray as opposed to the black, but honestly I have no idea. I might try that in a future attempt.

Another thing I’ve been noticing is that I’m personally getting worse at painting tiny details. Getting older is fun, ain’t it? This is partially due to aging eyesight but it’s also partially due to what I guess is a reduction or degradation of fine motor skills. I mean, I was never gonna be a surgeon, right, but still. I’m noticing it. I’m actually looking forward to painting up some kind of larger scale miniature just because of this. 

Of course I’m simply may not harbor any great talent in the miniature painting realm, and rather I might harbor a great talent for making excuses. Which do you think is more likely?

My feeling at this point in the process was total frustration. Maybe a dose of existential defeat hung around the fringes of my fragile ego. I flirted pretty heavily with the idea of just putting a color down on the armor and calling it “fantasy colored armor”. But something made me push through the aggravation, the gnashing of teeth and the wailing of the damned.

Oh, there was wailing, trust me. I could play you some of the scratch track audio recorded by the painting camera, but my capacity for embarrassment has as about the same limit as youtube does for profanity.

The thing that gave me just enough resolve to hammer through was the notion of “content”. 

Yes, I was sick to my stomach as well. Never say social media isn’t good for anything. 

So this is an example of utter failure. And exploiting public humiliation for views. 

But it’s also an example of the first step in any journey. A necessary, predictable, appropriate human reaction to the first step in learning something new.

Remember – to get somewhere you gotta start walking, even if it’s in the wrong direction. I’m just practicing what I preach, dammit. Or at least I’m ordering one of these right now and I’m gonna wear it! You’ll see.

Everyone’s got a different baseline of talent or baseline of skill – attribute score, if you will – in all different kinds of endeavors. But just like in a role playing game, just because you have a lower attribute score doesn’t mean you can’t succeed at an attempt to accomplish something using that low-scoring attribute. My first attempt at taking photos and shooting video were much better than this nonsense of a first attempt at non-metallic metal. That just means one thing comes easier to me than the other, but so what? We’ve all drawn that crappy first stick figure, or missed the ball when trying golf for the first time.

What? Yeah, I did that, I missed a lot of times and I’ve never tried golf again.

But whatever, right? If you wanna learn how to do something, you either try and quit or you go Lieutenant Dan – you call this a storm! Come and get me! – And you dare yourself to just jump off the cliff again and again until you grow those wings. Me and my ridiculously convoluted metaphors. Either way, it’s your choice. Be happy with it. I don’t wanna play golf, but I do wanna paint some damn non-metallic metal someday.

Even though today is obviously not that day. So here’s the finished model, and I don’t know what to say about it. But I’ve got it documented now and it’ll be useful at some point for comparative purposes, in some way. I’ll watch some more tutorials on the non-metallic metal process and look at some more examples and I’ll try this again, but I think I’ll almost certainly pick figure with a sword to try it on next. 

So, dare yourself to learn something new, initial results be damned! And then, understand that that feeling of frustration and nightmares is completely natural and a part of the learning process.

See ya!

We know the truth: it ain’t the gift, but the thought, that counts. And even though we might want to argue that point in certain situations, I think we all think it’s fundamentally true. 

Once you’re older than, you know, like twenty or something.

So, while this idea I’m sharing with you today is about a possible Christmas gift idea is mostly for miniature painters, I’ll toss in an idea for writers and Dungeon Masters too, ‘cause at some point, giving a present often feels way cooler than receiving one and we all have something to give that stems from our creativity.

And this gift idea goes both ways! Cause mini painters are always looking for ways to shrink that Pile Of Opportunity!

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes it’s Christmas in July! And we thank our patrons for their generous spirit that happens with or without Christmas, always much appreciated.

So a few months ago I promised you we’d have a bit of Christmas in the summer. Unless you’re in Australia, or, you know, elsewhere south of the equator. Then just, you know, counter swirl that statement.

Yes, I know the flushing swirl thing is a myth, but you know, I’m just riffing here.

So out of my decent sized immediate family, there are only three tabletop gamers – myself, my daughter and my oldest niece. For the record, I’ve got three brothers and four sisters. Nearly all of them have spouses and kids of varying ages. And for those of you wondering, yes, I’m the oldest. Huh, I guess I was born a 19 Delta. That’s an Army reference.  

A few years ago, while growing and cultivating my Pile of Opportunity like a good hobbyist, I came across this mini from Steamforged Games’ Guild Ball. Which I’ve never played but I do like quite a few of their figures. Immediately I was taken with the character and the sculpt, which is pretty unique in the skirmish game arena, there’s just so much character in the sculpt and the flying beer is an awesome detail. And before I even bought it I started thinking about my brother who brews beer in his basement. He’s as deep into the homebrew hobby as we are in the tabletop hobby. He makes straight up legit beer that is on par with all kinds of commercial and craft beer. I know. He’s got 10 taps – that’s right, ten – in the dining room that always have something crazy good on ‘em. I saw this figure and I was like, well, that’s my brother’s mascot right there.

So I put that mini in a Pile of Opportunity and just figured I’d get around to it at some point. But that’s the first time I started to think vaguely about gifting a miniature to someone. Fun fact, my brother has a handful of terribly painted minis I gave him probably 30 years ago. I saw ‘em the last time I stayed at his place. They are legitimately awful in that kinda nostalgic “this is a first time painter” sorta way.

But then sometime later I picked up this figure from Privateer Press, it’s a special edition mini and I just thought it was cool. And then I realized that it would be a perfect gift for my brother’s wife. She has basically her own meme going, she’s famous for this exact interaction: “Hey, you want some beer or some wine?” “Yes, please.” I wish I could have inscribed that on the miniature’s base.

Now, I’m probably making my brother and sister in law sound like a pair of dysfunctional party animal alcoholics, but that’s not the case at all. They are an exceptional pair of functional party animal parents and their home is the best place to vacation. And yes, you should be jealous. 

On an entirely different occasion, again, years later, I actually needed to give someone a painted mini and I needed some way to format that for them. So I went on Amazon and found these bell jar display glass dome things. And it worked out pretty cool. And that’s when the idea of painting up those two minis to give my brother and sister in law bloomed into my full blown Christmas project. Which is a project you could do too.

Now, as I mentioned, most of my family is … how do I say this diplomatically? Most of my family is unfamiliar with DnD. And if a skirmish game blew up in their face, they still wouldn’t have any idea what a skirmish game was. But they all, to a person, love the Lord of the Rings. 

So the first thing I did was make a list of all the folks I was gonna paint up minis for. Like I said, I have quite a few nieces and nephews but I decided to draw a line and only do this particular round of gifts for those over the age of sixteen. Hey, the youngsters get Lego, so, whatever, now I’m jealous. 

I had this vague idea about photographing the finished miniatures as a group and it’d be like this family portrait of adventurers or something. So I felt I’d have to also paint up a mini for myself too, otherwise this family portrait would be weird, right? So my full list came to 14 miniatures. But it’s cool, I started this project in August which is why I was able to get everything done on time.

Now the coolest part to me about this gift idea was personalizing each figure for the gift-ee? Gift recipient. And I also wanted this to be a big surprise for everyone. My family lives all across the country and I thought this would be such a cool thing for everyone to share in this communal surprise at the same time on Christmas Day. So I wanted to keep the whole thing as secret as I could and I needed two pieces of information from everyone – one, I needed to pick figures according to what each person might like, thematically, and two, I needed to find out everyone’s favorite color. For the paint schemes, right?

So I contacted everyone on the list separately and asked something like, “hey, if you were gonna be a character in Lord of the Rings, what would you be? Like would you be an elf with a bow or would you be a magical wizard, or an axe-slinging dwarf? Please don’t say you wanna be a hobbit.”

This sound familiar? Course. I used the same technique here as how I approach getting new players into DnD, there’s a video on that right here.

That’s how I went about selecting a miniature for each person. To find out their favorite colors, I went a little bit lateral with my espionage techniques. I asked various people what other people’s favorite colors were, while swearing them to secrecy and making it sound like I was just getting this one thing for this one person. With all the recon done, my list was complete.

I did some shopping and leveraging of the Pile Of Opportunity for the figures and then I spent a couple months painting them all up. This is why you start this project in the summer. Or winter, if you’re down under, right? You want plenty of lead time, ‘cause if any project has a hard deadline, this is it.

Now the painting part is one side of the project, the other is the presentation. There were all kinds of little factors I had to figure out. I wanted to alleviate as much hassle on the recipient’s end as I could. I wanted each figure to ship with it’s own glass dome and all that stuff to stay safe in transit. What worked out super perfect was that a mini wrapped in a nice little burrito of bubble wrap fit inside a glass dome. This meant I could ship each mini and dome inside the OEM dome packaging, which was itself already designed with styrofoam inserts to protect the glass from demented Amazon drivers. 

I also wanted an easy way for a recipient to secure the mini in the dome once it was unpacked. And I wanted the mini to be secure on the plinth when it was placed on display. I briefly considered including a chunk of poster tac in each package but that’s not very elegant, it’s subject to user error and it would end up being a mess after a few years cause it like melts right? That’s when I figured magnets would be the way to go, they would make for the best user experience.

Of course that meant I had to counter sink a magnet into either the wooden plinth or the mini base and either another magnet or a piece of steel into the other. It’s a pain in the ass no doubt but overall, it’s worth the effort. It took me some time to figure out what size magnets to use and specifically I was looking for a magnetic bond that was strong but not too strong. I had a, perhaps irrational, fear of someone trying to pick their mini up and some part of it breaking due to the strength of the magnets. I eventually settled on these and I installed one on each of the plinths. And I got these steel blanks, which are really quite thin, and installed them in the base of each miniature. There’s really a whole bunch of ways you could do this and varying sizes of magnets and whatnot, but I went with this combo to alleviate the strength of a double magnet system and also the depth or thinness of each would allow me to fix them where they needed to go without too much trouble. 

To drill the sockets for the magnets in the plinths, I bought a set of dremel bits made for woodworking, specifically getting one of these that matched the diameter of the magnets I wanted to use. These bits carve out a flat-bottomed hole that’s perfect for dropping the magnet into. I drilled a pilot hole to accommodate the guide nub on the bit and then just did my best to not mar the plinth and to not drill too deep. Here’s a plinth I messed up on and yeah, I had to order a replacement.

I used thick CA glue for both the magnets and steel blanks and a little bit of baking soda to fill in where I needed it. Once these were all done, everything was pretty much ready. I shot individual photos of each figure and then staged the group shot. Then I packed everything up into the dome packages and then I did one last thing.

I created this little insert in photoshop with this holiday message and the URL for the photo gallery. I even turned the URL into a QR code, just to make it that much easier for people to quickly jump into the gallery. I thought folks might like to see everyone else’s miniatures, especially the group shot. I printed this out on my black and white printer and just slipped one into each package.

The final step was to actually wrap each dome in Christmas wrapping paper, add a little name tag and then I sent out large single boxes to each family’s address. I sent them out early too, I think right at the beginning of December, and on Christmas Day, everyone opened their figures. And it was pretty damn cool.

Now, I think if you’re a writer, you could do the same sort of thing with short stories. Regardless of the medium you work in, there’s just something super cool about sharing your creativity or your hobby with your friends and family, especially those who are not exposed to it. It all just takes a little planning and some enthusiasm to get it done. I think the idea that what you’re working on is a gift creates some energy and drive beyond your normal hobbying engine, so to speak. Plus, you’re just doing more of what you enjoy. How do you go wrong with more hobbying?

So! Go make some gifts. And have fun sharing some of yourself with those you love. I bet you’ll feel pretty stellar about it and I’ll be your gift-ee’s will be pleasantly surprised.

See ya!