Today we put up our Christmas tree.
What was behind door number 3…
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Advent Calendar 2023 – Day 2
Advent Calendar 2023 – Day 1
Christmas is coming and there is a stupid elf knocking around messing up people’s houses. But not in this house! Oh no, that elf is banned!!!
This house is a right mess without help from a soft toy, that has apparently become traditional over the last decade. That’s not a tradition, that’s still just a bad habit. “Baa Humbug” I hear you cry – well that’s not unjustified if I’m honest – but not for that dumb elf.
In this house we have the tradition of an Advent Calendar*. This year has got a little extreme** but I thought I’d try and share my advent calendar journey this year because 2023’s Advent Calendar is a gaming calendar!!! (Last year’s was a Q-Workshop dice calendar)
Mantic Games have produced an Advent Calendar which builds up into a mini game called Bar Room Brawl. At the time of writing there are still some available at Goblin Gaming if this jingles your bells.
The box lid becomes the game mat, the playing pieces etc are behind the doors. The rules are behind the door trays, so you have to wait till the 24th before it all comes together. So what’s behind door number 1 ?
Continue reading2023 a New Year, and a look back at 2022
As is tradition on this block at New Year, although its getting later and later in January, I have a look back at what I achieved hobby wise over the last year. I find making Hobby New Year Resolutions to be pointless, and possibly depressing, when you look back as see what I did compared to what I hoped. That said it can also be good to take a look and see what you completed.
So what did I manage to actually finish in 2022?
Continue readingJubilee Nail Art
Need some brownie points?
Is there possibly a large delivery landing on the doorstep in two weeks time?
Well have I got a plan for you. It’ll cost you some time and maybe an old brush (unless you use your own paints – nail varnish is horrible to paint with).
My wife asked for Union Flag nails. Time to put those painting skills to use.
Another year, another cake
If you have followed the blog for a while you’ll have seen an occasional birthday cake pop up. I use my ‘hobby skills’ to decorate my son’s birthday cake. This year he asked for a minecraft cake, which had to include Steve and a tree.
Obviouly I cheated and used a Minecraft Steve toy, but the rest is just icing. I had fun painting the TNT with food colouring.
I didn’t make a cake for my lad’s 7th birthday, so its nice to be able to this year. I still think the BB-8 cake was my best effort.
New Year, New Hobby
It’s that time of year when I traditionally* look back over last year’s posts and see how I faired against the hobby goals I set myself at the start of that year. I would also set my hobby goals for the coming year too.
However, this year I really don’t feel like it, it is bound to be a disappointing result, the amount of hobby time and completed projects** have been sorely lacking through 2021.
I can remember starting a few different projects last year, and I have a couple of others that I want to get finished from previous years (eek!). But I know I have not achieved either. There is a surprising number of models built over the last year but not painted knocking around in my house, or more likely built and primed, with maybe even a coat of paint or two. There is also a surprising number of draft articles behind the scenes here at Splayedpaintbrush Towers*** that never made it off the drawing board.
So what’s the point of this post? Well I suppose it is just to remind myself that this is a hobby blog about my hobby. The definition of a hobby is an activity or interest that is done for pleasure or relaxation. In others words, I build/paint/play with models for fun. This purpose of this post is to remind us all that it doesn’t matter that project X didn’t get finished as long as you had fun whatever you did do. Sure it’s good to finish a project, but it’s also not worth getting down about either.
Thinking back over 2021 hobby wise, now that I have got to typing this article up, I do remember enjoying a number of things in particular. Some of which made their way onto the blog, some didn’t. So instead of counting successes as finished projects, how about I just list some of the projects I had most fun with last year.
Continue reading#ATCLASHOFTHETITANS 2021
#ATClashOfTheTitans is a challenge organised by BattleBlingStore and Maximal Fire Podcast to encourage people to paint up their Adeptus Titanicus backlog, or inspire a second Legio to get painted up. Essentially a community challenge to build and paint up some titans. This is running from August through to the end of October.
I’ve got a backlog of titans, hell my backlog has a backlog. So I figured I’d try and ride the #ATClashOfTheTitans motivation train and hopefully get some of my partially built titans finished.
My August challenge is to get the Warbringer titan finished. Its been sat gathering dust on the shelf since April last year. Seriously, I had to brush the dust off before taking this photo:
The green armour is the only part completed. There is a lot of work left in the model yet. Dusting it off is all that’s happened so far, 11 days of August left.
If all goes to plan I’m hoping to have an Arcus Battleline Maniple completed by October, at least a minimum strength maniple anyways. An Arcus Maniple consists of a Warbringer and from two to four Warhounds. If there’s any more motivation left in the pot I might get some knights painted too.
What’s the community part of it? Well, Maximal Fire and BattleBling are encouraging participants to post their progress on social media channels using the hashtag: #ATClashOfTheTitans – as you may have already guessed. Maximal Fire also have discord server (link) and on Wednesday evenings a ‘hang out and hobby’ chat group runs to basically hobby with other folks from around the globe. If you’re joining in the challenge, it may be worth you buying a BattleBling Clash Pack, its got a cool little certificate, some scenery and a clash plaque, but it also puts you in the running for claiming prizes from the BattleBling prize pool. Wednesday sees BattleBling pick out their favourite post from the #ATClashOfTheTitans posts which they’ll award a prize to that person to reward them for their progress.
The clash pack is available from the BattleBlingStore on Etsy.
July Update
…and June’s…
…and May’s.
Crikey, I’ve been a bit lax recently on the blog. Life has simply got in the way a bit. I’m still working from home – unbelievably it might be May 2022 before I’m back in the office – and my hobby area has been overtaken by my office. After sitting at ‘work’ all day the last thing I feel like doing is sitting in the same place to do some ‘hobby’. That’s not to say I don’t want to do any hobbying, its just that I can’t face sitting in same place any longer. Working from home has its advantages, but i’m now sick of it. The other thing is that I’m a dad again, we recently adopted a 1 year old daughter, this certainly makes life busy lol.
So what hobby have i done recently?March Hobby Update
Oh my word, where is the year going!!? You may have noticed that my last post was back at the start of Feb and this post is technically still in March- maybe, probabaly, just…depending on time zone. I admit it, there is no plan for this post and frantically rambling to generate some content for March. So just what I have I been up to over the last almost two month?
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Splayed Paint Brush 