Dear World; it’s a Kilt.

More specifically, it’s a utilikilt. It’s comfortable, rugged, and lets me carry lots of things in the pockets. Calling it a “skirt” just makes you look uneducated, and when you do it in a way that’s supposed to sound insulting, it just makes me laugh. This is directed at all the dudes in big trucks out there, who like to call out “Nice skirt!” at me while you roll by in your too-big, gas-guzzling monster vehicle. If you think calling it a skirt is going to insult me or belittle me in any way, try again. All the compliments I get every time I’m out and about far outweigh the occasional jerk like you who has to prove how manly he is by insulting somebody else.
Here’s an idea: why not try to expand your horizons and try a kilt on for yourself? Utilikilts makes several different models, and they’re all awesome. I wear a Workman’s, which is great because like I said before, it’s rugged and has tons of pocket space.

I love my Utilikilt. I plan to get more at some point. They’re that comfortable, and truly worth the price. Check out the Utilikilts store here.

Things to come…

I spent time today working on a stencil for new dice bags… What does everyone think?  The “Greyed Out” is going on my current Moleskine notebook.

I have several more quotes that still need to get put on the stencil, but this is a great start I think.  The plan is to use either fabric ink or acrylic paint to apply them to the dice bags.  Acrylic paint sticks very well and is almost impossible to get off your clothes, so I’m fairly certain it will work for dice bags as well.

The first of these new dice bags should be live in my Etsy store next week. I also currently have a sale going on for 20% off – use coupon code SAVE20 to get the discount. You can find my shop, Greyed Out, here.

New Spaces and Places

We’ve successfully moved into the new apartment, and the old place is no more.  Keys are handed in, and we are starting to unwind from what seemed like an eternity of moving boxes from one apartment to the next.  We own a lot of books, because we’re both literature-loving nerds, so there was a lot of heavy lifting involved.

The cats like the new place, and I think they’re still exploring and getting used to being in new spaces.  We’ve got almost everything set up the way we want it, except for a few things here and there.  The living room seems empty, but that’s because it’s hardwood floor, with a lot of space in the middle that’s begging to be filled with a rug when we can afford to pick one up.

I set up my desk today, which means that in the next few days I’ll be back to sketching and painting and working on dice bags.  I got supplies to start screen printing them, although I couldn’t find the right ink at Hobby Lobby, and will have to make a return trip for that.  To crowd source just a bit – do any of my readers have Photoshop skills?  I have a logo that I need modified just a little so that I can screen print it effectively, but I personally don’t have a copy of Photoshop.  It would probably take about 5 minutes of work for someone who knows what they are doing.

The plan right now is to start making dice bags with various roleplaying game related sayings on them, and I’ve posted on Reddit and gotten some great ideas for quotes.  Things like “Bag of Holding”, “Die Orc”, “May all your hits be crits”, and so on will soon be making an appearance on my dice bags.  If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them – they just have to fit on a 6″x7″ dice bag.  I could probably do custom bags as well, which would be a great option for birthday gifts.  Imagine a friend’s face as he opens his gift and finds a handmade dice bag custom printed with an in-joke specific to your group.

 

Cats and Their Oddities

Odd really likes jumping on our big mirror.

 

The mirror stands roughly 6 feet tall, and he can leap up to the top from the ground with no problem.  The lack of front claws doesn’t seem to be an issue for him.  I’m against declawing cats, because it’s much like having the first joint of each of your fingers removed, but I’m glad that we were able to rescue Odd and give him a good home.  He and our other cat, Bela Lugosi, are slowly starting to get along.  Now if only they’d stop initiating chases with each other at 6am…

We’ve raised $75 out of $700 in our ChipIn, which is just above 10%.  If everyone could spread the word, it would be awesome – share on Facebook, Twitter, ask your aunt, etc.  I’ll post the link to the ChipIn page again at the bottom of this picture.  I’ve been considering perhaps doing a small giveaway with donations – perhaps a dice bag if you donate $20 or more?  What’s everyone think?

 

Streeeeeeeeeeetch!

 

The ChipIn page for our pet deposit can be found here:

http://kiltedgerman.chipin.com/pet-deposit

 

Again, thanks to everyone who shares the post, spreads the word, and is able to give a bit here or there.  We love our cats, and they’re a blast to watch.

 

 

 

 

Beast-09 From the Ground Up

I started work on my Beast-09 a few days ago, after tons of inner debate on how I wanted to pose him.  I’m still not entirely sure about the posing the arms will take, but I got his legs and base done tonight.

 

This will be the base.  I wanted Beast standing with a leg up on a slightly raised edge, both to give him extra height and to make him look more menacing.  The base here is cork with plasticard layered on top.  The idea is that it’s a concrete/shale slab that’s cracked.

 

 

This is the position the legs will take.  No glue, no pins, just the legs standing flat on the plasticard.  I’ve cut off and filed down the pegs on the bottoms of the feet.  Initially I planned to pin one of both feet.

 

 

And here is the final position of legs+waist on the base.  I used green stuff in the peg-holes, and made sure to position both feet flat on the card of the base.  The green stuff will be curing overnight.  Instead of pinning the feet, I glued them down so that the green stuff will be in the position I want it to cure in.  I’m hoping that the final model will be stable enough to stand without pins, especially once the cork is glued to the actual base.  Here I’m using a Games Workshop monster base as a square platform for the cork to rest on.  Previously I used a pencil to trace the inner circle of the 50mm Privateer Press base onto the monster base, so I can easily tell where the edges are, to avoid too much cork overhang.  (Hint: the outside edge of a Privateer Press 40mm base fits perfectly into the inner ring of a 50mm base.)

 

 

This is the first model in a very long time that I’ve started putting together before priming/painting.  I’m curious to see how well it goes, since I’m so used to doing everything in pieces and then glueing at the very end.  Originally I wasn’t planning on glueing the legs to the card, but wanted to make sure that the legs stayed flat while the green stuff epoxy cures.

That’s it for this update.  Thanks for reading!

Pet Deposits and Moving

We adopted a cat a week ago, and named him Odd.  Odd is a Maine Coon/Norwegian mix, and is just over a year old.  We found him at a shelter, where he was staying in a small cage surrounded by lots of other cats.  His previous owners had had him declawed, and when they got tired of him, they took him to a vet and told them to put him down.  A simple as that.

“We don’t want this living creature anymore, so please kill him for us.”

We found him and brought him home, and he and our other Maine Coon, a black cat named Bela Lugosi, are just now starting to get along.  Odd likes to crawl under the comforter and sleep there during the day.  He jumps on tall things, and look out over the room.  He bats you, hard, with his little paws when he’s playing, or when he wants you to leave him alone.  He also loves getting snuggled, and will shove his head into your hand so you can scratch his head.

This is Odd.

We are moving apartments at the end of this month.  Our apartment complex is great, but they do require a pet deposit.  We just didn’t know that it would be $300 per cat.  That kind of money isn’t easy to come up with, so I wanted to start a ChipIn fundraiser to help out a little bit.  I set the goal at $700, because we also want to see about getting Odd and Bela a cat carrier and a climbing tree.

The ChipIn page can be found here:  http://kiltedgerman.chipin.com/pet-deposit

Any help would be incredible, and much appreciated.  Our two cats are definitely our babies, and the last thing we want to do is give them away.  Please feel free to share this post if possible.  Thank you.

 

 

Spriggan Finished

I painted him to match my Zerkova, which was fun since I ended up really liking the scheme.  Additional battle damage/wear was done largely with thinned down Bloodstone, and I stippled it on in places as well.  The base was done after I saw the “concrete basing” preview for the latest No Quarter magazine, and I kept the slate-like look because I liked it so much, rather than going for a more concrete-like color.

 

 

On a random note, Spriggans are a pain in the butt to photograph, thanks to the way the carapace slopes at the front.  I tried my best, though.

Crooked Houses Part 2

Continuation of my previous tutorial.  Here I’m covering briefly how to do the house’s edging and frame pieces, and a bit of the painting process.

 

While this can also be done with balsa wood strips, here I used pieces of matte board cut into rectangular strips.  Simply cut to fit the edge of each section of the house, and then glue them down.  It’s important to get the angles as close as possible for a tight fit, especially in places like the cross bar above.

 

A view of the side pieces.

 

 

For this section the easiest way to get the right curve on your pieces is to take the template you’ve made and trace out the roof curve on paper to make a template for the curved pieces seen above.  I hope that makes sense, it sounds a bit complicated but it’s really not.

The little piece sticking out at the very top of the roof is a section of bass wood cut at a slight angle and glued on with superglue.

The house's door.

The front door is a piece of balsa wood, cut down into a door-like section and glued down.  Do this first, and then make the frame with thin section of matte board or, in this case, more bass wood.

 

Toothpicks!  These fancy toothpicks are cheap, and the ends make great doorknobs and window hinges.  Just take your craft knife and carefully slice off the tips of the toothpicks.

The window is made the same way as the door.

Doorknob.

Those cheap acrylic craft paints from Hobby Lobby or Michael’s are great for painting terrain projects.  They usually run about $1-2 per bottle, and you get a ton of paint in each.  I have six or seven bottles in various browns, greys, etc that I use for these kinds of projects.

Coat 1 on the roof.

The roof will take multiple coats of paint, since reds are generally finicky.  This is a mix of red and a lighter grey.  For the house walls, I’m using a tan brown, which I’ll weather later. The trim will be painted in a black/grey shade.

The front of the house in brown.

 

And here is the house with the roof finished.

 

 

Right now the chimney still needs painting, as does the trim.  The house will also get some weathering to make it look more worn and lived in.  But that’s the basics of the tutorial.  The same principles can be applied to other types and shapes of houses as well.

Finally, this is the original house template that I downloaded years and years ago, when I first found the tutorial for these houses on the Privateer Press forums.  It prints out pretty well on a regular sheet of paper.