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As far as I rank myself I'm moderately good at painting my figures. I chose a Chaos Daemon army so I could have the creative ability to make each of my models different if I wanted to. My husband plays Imperial Guard so most of his creative juices go towards terrain and making nose art for his tanks and flyers. I didn't like the idea of everyone looking the same so I looked things up, I learned techniques from other artists willing to blog or make videos about their projects. The better I got at painting and terrain the more I got to thinking that these learned skills could be used elsewhere besides on a gaming table. Our first apartment was tiny so on Christmas we didn't have a tree, I think I just put a little wreath on the door and left it at that. Our second apartment was bigger but by then we also had more stuff to move in. I made the decision to get a little table tree from Target and decorate it with those tiny fairy lights on a string. The topper was another matter but I wanted to be unique I chose an angel from the older bible artistry called a throne. A flaming wheel of fire with thousands of eyes. I play Tzeentch and Slaanesh so that sounded right up my alley. Two plastic shower curtain rings, a bag of googly eyes, Citadel paint, some metal angel wings from a DIY beaded angel kit, some glittery sheer ribbon, tin foil, and a crap ton of metallic glue gun sticks later I had my angel. Since then I've used similar techniques for building a water fountain terrain piece out of plastic costume jewelry bangles, managed to hot glue myself up a scratch built Soul Grinder, and learned how to (very delicately) use hot glue to make vines on bigger terrain pieces before sticking choice bits of hobby moss on it to make it look overgrown.

I have some silicone molds just waiting for a rainy day before next winter when I'm bored because we got a bigger tree on clearance and I hate the look of pre-made angels. I'm gonna be collecting bitz off eBay and other places sparingly to save on cost, mostly Warhammer fantasy and the new(not really) Age of Sigmar line.

So... what have you guys done?

Cool

Crafting is Crafting tbh. It doesn't so much matter (except to yourself of course) what you're doing with it. I mean, I scrapbook, do a bit of carpentry, crochet, quilt, and other similar crafts - all the skills have been useful in the different areas. A lot of the stuff I do for scrapbooking, or just working with paper, works to some extent in making terrain.

And the tools ooh don't get me started on tools Our hobby, I think, more than just about any other makes use of tools for other crafts/arts all the time.

Interestingly my habit of picking up interesting bits and bobs off the ground whilst walking the dogs has gotten my youngest son to sort of do the same. LOL this is not necessarily always a good thing, as the 4 bedraggled chairs he 'rescued' to make his 'man cave' are still sitting out on my back porch.. But he also brought home a metal pipe and used a lot of my tools to turn it into several rings.

So far I think the most 'crossover' kind of things I've done tend to be more directed to building shelves for storing all our wargaming stuff, and the card box I made for my Malifaux deck.

I'm working on trying to learn to mold and use resin, so I can cast some ornaments actually, for our next christmas tree - or just because. haha I'm going to try to do some Space Marines, some Skaveny stuff etc. We'll see how it goes...

Love your tree idea! It looks great too!