I recently agreed to take part in the 6 month mountain reduction and painting challenge set by Chris, from Chris' miniature woes blog.
As I'm sure most readers know, Mountain in this case is nerd slang meaning pile of unpainted miniatures... Or "lead mountain" although that term is less than accurate in modern times.
There are a couple of caveats for me.. The main one being that my "mountain" is mostly back in Sydney awaiting sea-freight. It's unlikely I'll see it until next year.
Do not fear though, I still have at least a hill of unpainted figures with me, not to mention an entire Vampire-level pledge of Reaper plastics still in the box. I'm a little bit on the fence about what to do with that lot though. Do I break scale? I fear what might happen.
So in the spirit of the challenge my first post is here (and on instagram), with a bold experiment in frugality and hobby science.
Coffee basing paste
I have used my old coffee grounds as ground cover in the past with reasonable success, although I just sprinkled it over wet PVA glue at the time.
As I have run out of texture gel for basing my figures and am trying to be frugal, I splurged £2 on a small bottle of glue from the newsagent and mixed it undiluted with dry coffee grounds until it became a thick paste. I enjoy good quality hobby products as much as the next nerd, but I love finding ways to build things for free, or in this case, out of literal garbage.