New Year, New Goals: Keeping the Blog Alive!

Posted on January 1, 2024 by pauljohnslife_lq7j8k

Happy New Year!

It has been a while…far too long. Lots has gone on, and if you follow some of my other social media you may know a bit of it, but that’s not what we’re here for today. Maybe next week I’ll provide a bit more of a life and health update, for now though let’s focus on plans for this blog.

I’m not much for resolutions and don’t believe I’ve ever kept one that I’ve made, so we won’t be doing any of that here, but I do want to set a goal for this blog, and that goal is 50 posts this year. That’s a bit less than one post a week, and will probably be more at the beginning of the year, and few later on, but we’ll try to hit at least 1 per week so maybe in the end I’ll exceed my goals for once.

So far all my posts in this blog have been related to making terrain for gaming and modeling, but this channel is called Paul John’s Life, so expect a variety of topics. There’s a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons (ok…not really a new edition, but close enough), so I expect to get into that a bit. I’ve started hording collecting Hot Wheels and other die cast cars recently, and would like to convert some for Gaslands, so that content will slide into here as well.

Other possible topics include, but are not limited to: book reviews, recipes, music, life updates, and anything else that pops to mind.

So hang on and enjoy the ride!

Happy New Year!

Paul

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Pine Bark: Nature’s Free Terrain

Posted on October 25, 2020 by pauljohnslife_lq7j8k

The trash and recycling bins aren’t the only source for free terrain and basing materials. Nature provides a variety of bits to be used on your miniature and terrain projects. 

I first saw pine bark being used as a basing material while watching James Wappel’s Twitch stream. He made a small diorama using pine bark as the base with sticks and twigs decorating the base for a miniature. 

This fallen tree should provide me quite a nice supply of pine bark.

After seeing this idea I noticed a large fallen pine tree near my office and grabbed a handful of small pieces of bark and took them home. After a little research, I put them on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes to kill bugs or other living organisms in the bark, and after they cool put them in a zip lock bag to store.  I’ve actually seen a wide variety of advice on how to treat the bark, but since this didn’t start a fire in the oven, I think I’ll stick with it. 

That night, though I was not specifically searching for ways to use the bark, I came across a video from Bard’s Craft where he used the bark as rock faces, cut it into blocks to serve as rough cut stone walls, and chopped and sifted the bark to use as different grades of sand and gravel. 

Perhaps a little difficult to see in the picture, but about 70% of this bark is one large piece.

So back to the tree I went to gather more bark, even going for a much larger piece this time. And to see how well it would work. I chopped up one of the smaller bits of bark I had already dried to see how it looked up close. Though I think I need to chop it a little finer to make gravel, after running the chopped bark through a sieve I had a very nice sandy textured material.

Top: Larger chunks of pine bark after chopping with a knife. Bottom: Finer bits of pine bark after sifting what I chopped with a knife.
A pair of ork skeletons with chopped pine bark on the base.

This material will definitely go into a number of future projects. Have you used pine bark in any of your projects? If so, how did you use it? Share your ideas in the comments below! 

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Bread Tabs: Free Terrain Bits You May Already Have

Posted on October 12, 2020 by pauljohnslife_lq7j8k

When I started looking around the house for trash to use on terrain projects, I couldn’t believe how many little plastic bread tabs were sitting on our kitchen counter near the toaster. 

While most of the bread tabs are the same, there are a few in different sizes and colors

While these pieces are small, they can be cut up and glued together into nice little greeblie pieces to put on the face of structures made from foam core or styrene as shown in the picture below.

A couple of detail pieces that could be applied to the outside of a structure. The one on the left is definitely a bit orky feeling, while the one on the right would make a nice set of buttons or controls.

Also, while I do not know that I have the patience or the attention to detail to make many of them. If you collect 6 of these tabs you could cut them up and make a small shipping crate from them. Add one or two more tabs and you can cut some smaller pieces to add detail to your small crate. 

As an experiment, I used my leather punch on one of them and created small circles ranging from 2 mm to 4.5 mm in diameter. These pieces could serve as rivets, buttons, or other small round detail elements as I did in the greeblie photo above.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but I used this leather punch to punch some different sized circles from one bread tab. Purely a coincidence, or my imagination, that the resulting bread tab looks like a dragon head.

How would you use this bit of trash in your terrain projects? Please leave a comment below and let me know. 

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Cheap Terrain: Sauce Dipping Cups

Posted on October 4, 2020 by pauljohnslife_lq7j8k

Call them what you want: McNuggets, Nugs, Tenders, Bites. Many fast food restaurants sell a breaded chicken product meant to be dipped in sauce, and those sauces arrive in small plastic containers that can be rinsed out and used in terrain after you’re done with your meal instead of just throwing them out. 

A few sauce cups I’ve acquired.

Perhaps I haven’t visited enough different places, but so far many of my sauces have come in almost identical rectangular containers. Except for the black containers which I know are from McDonalds new Mighty Hot Sauce, I cannot tell at a glance whether the other containers are from McDonalds, Burger King, or Golden Skillet (a local chain).  I’ve also gotten a couple of small round sauce containers, but those are far less common.  

A quick mockup of a piece of terrain using inverted sauce cups on a base of corrugated plastic with a few unpainted Space Marines for scale.

My plan for the rectangular containers is to use them to make dragon’s teeth tank traps. I may experiment with using the containers as a mold for plaster or resin, but they are easy enough to acquire that I’ll just glue them face down onto a base, and add some texture and paint. 

Cutting the rectangular face from the containers will allow it to be used to indicate doorways on the face of a building. While the sides of the container can act to provide a bit of decoration or texture to large flat areas of a terrain piece. 

A single sauce cup cut up into pieces to create a sci-fi doorway frame, some teardrop shaped details, and a few other scraps.

The containers would also work well to represent HVAC units, large electrical panels, or other types of control boxes or panels on the outside of larger structures. 

How would you use this bit of trash in your terrain projects? Please leave a comment below and let me know.

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Hello world!

Posted on January 12, 2019 by pauljohnslife_lq7j8k

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

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