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Hi all, would like to jump in here and start sharing some things starting with a big tut I just finished. First big game/miniatures accomplishment of 2013: this Ikea hack lighted display case made from a Billy bookcase with Morebo doors. The back was replaced with a sheet of custom-cut mirrored acrylic. Seemed like it would be fairly easy and straightforward, but it proved a challenge. I'm pretty happy with the result, though.






And some closeups of what's gone in so far:









More details and bigger pics on this blog post:
http://belchedfromthedepths.blogspot.com/2013/01/miniatures-display-case.html

Full tutorial:
http://belchedfromthedepths.blogspot.com/2013/02/tutorial-how-to-make-lighted-mirror.html

That's odd, the embeds are changing their mind on whether they want to work or not for me.




I'm not sure whether it's me or not, but you did link to the folder and not the pic anyway (did you right-click > original > copy image location and use that for the embed?)

Another example:

That sword trophy is certainly rather phallic.

Flickr doesn't work too well for img-tags because of 403's. They don't seem to like hotlinking...

Anyways, as I click the pics open, it looks pretty neat idea. I'd give it a go if I didn't have display cases already.

Shaozun wrote:
That's odd, the embeds are changing their mind on whether they want to work or not for me.

 kaapelikala wrote:
Flickr doesn't work too well for img-tags because of 403's. They don't seem to like hotlinking...

Huh, the images work fine for me yesterday and today until I log in, but now I see the problem. Flickr is absolutely fine with hotlinking. They have terms of service that ask you to link back (that's why the img tags are nested in url tags in my original post) but flickr has never been known to enforce this. I've posted these images elsewhere and here is the only problem. And it's not the nesting that's the problem either. Tried it both ways. Very strange.

Anyone know what could be the issue here?

 spears wrote:
That sword trophy is certainly rather phallic.

I'll give you it's a little OTT

You know, Dakka Dakka has excellent gallery functionality right on the site for image hosting.

 Ouze wrote:
You know, Dakka Dakka has excellent gallery functionality right on the site for image hosting.

It wouldn't take that long to upload the pics to dakkadakka for this particular post, but it's not a tenable long term solution as that's extra time I don't have for each and every post.


Anyone else know what's up?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I did a little research. I wonder if the flickr issue is due to dakkadakka placing nofollow tags on the outgoing image links. The nofollow links stop the flow of google pagerank from one site to another. Now, flickr puts nofollow links on all the links leaving their site too, so yeah, it's tit for tat if it turns out it is the underlying issue. That may be why dakkadakka is being singled out for punishment, though.

So I'm curious, does anyone else have any insight? Also, why is dakkadakka going the nofollow route? You expect a faceless corporation to do cruddy things like that, but not your for-the-people game forum.

 Spooktalker wrote:


So I'm curious, does anyone else have any insight? Also, why is dakkadakka going the nofollow route? You expect a faceless corporation to do cruddy things like that, but not your for-the-people game forum.

You should PM legoburner or go post this question in the Nuts & Bolts forum. Hoping that the site administrator happens upon your thread isn't going to get your question answered.

It might be a default setting on this forum. I belong two a couple of forums where flikr images can't be hot-linked with the img /img tags. In fact, I'm not a member of ANY that allow it.

I hope you figure it out.

That's a nice looking cabinet, plenty of space and well lit.

Nice work. I think when I do my display cabinet (when I have a study/library of my own, or man-cave if you like, I think I'll put a 'floor' and terrain on each shelf - I don't like the glass and mirrors look personally

Nice work although I think I would have tried to hide the light fixture.

I have two billy book cases at the house, both are being used for DVDs and wife's scrapbooking supplies, but I have two Flarky book cases that I use for my miniatures. The Flarky is discontinued, but it's basically a smaller Billy. I might see if this is doable for it.

@Kronk thanks for your thoughts! So far I haven't had an issue at the half-dozen other forums I frequent, but I'll keep that in mind. I'll consider flagging the mod--thanks for the tip. For now I was just curious if there was any common knowledge. I googled the issue and it keeps coming up but none of the threads had a satisfactory answer/factual information.

 Million wrote:
Nice work. I think when I do my display cabinet (when I have a study/library of my own, or man-cave if you like, I think I'll put a 'floor' and terrain on each shelf - I don't like the glass and mirrors look personally

Hey, yeah, I agree with you that's the ideal way, but an awful lot more work to light as obviously each shelf will block the one beneath. The purpose of the mirror and glass is to help get the light to the lower shelves. But I'm already daydreaming about a second case made of a light, quality wood where each shelf would individually lighted. The trick with lighting that way is to get it diffuse enough that it won't blow the contrast too high/be too dramatic.The dramatic style lighting (leds in particular) can work ok when you're lighting big comic-book or movie statues of the weta variety, etc but would play badly over a well painted mini.

 Manchu wrote:
Nice work although I think I would have tried to hide the light fixture.

My original plan was to have a piece of opaque silver (if I could get it) acrylic to mount just under the roof and cover the light, and have it cut at the same time as the mirror. Someone convinced me along the way it wasn't needed. But maybe I'll reconsider. That would be a fairly straightforward upgrade.

 MisterMoon wrote:
I have two billy book cases at the house, both are being used for DVDs and wife's scrapbooking supplies, but I have two Flarky book cases that I use for my miniatures. The Flarky is discontinued, but it's basically a smaller Billy. I might see if this is doable for it.

There was a bookcase at ikea when I bought this one that was the depth of a cd, and could take the same Morebo doors you see here. Could have been the Flarky sold under a different name.Can't recall the name, though, and haven't been to Ikea in the last year.

edit:now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the slim bookcase was sold under the Besta label.

This is brilliant! Seems to fit all my needs. I'm thinking of buying the Billy with Morebo doors (available in the uk Ikeas) and replacing the standard billy wooden shelves with the glass versions (£8 each), i'll look into lighting at some point too, possibly their LED strips...