My girlfriend's birthday is rapidly approaching, and I thought it would be a cute gift if I were to give her a painted up miniature diorama of
something, as she is admirably tolerant of my wargaming hobbies.
I was scratching my head as to what, exactly, to give her until I found a miniature made by Eureka Miniatures called the 'Frog King'.
(These are the stock colors, not anything I've painted) As my girlfriend has an usual love for frogs, I thought it would be cute for her as a gift, so I went ahead and got myself the mini. I won't really be converting it, just basing it up and painting it as best I can.
I found the lid to some container in my basement and I decided it would make a pretty reasonable base. My next step was to grab some insulation foam and cut it down to fill the insides and create a slope on which I could pour water effects to create a sort of 'pond' on one side.
Then I coated the whole thing with bondo to make it harder and prevent primer sprays from eating it alive, followed by a layer of elmers glue and water and some rocks, and another layer of the elmers and water once that had tried to make sure everything held steady. The 'rocks' are just bits of wood mulch I found in a plant pot around the house.
In the interest of painting these things properly, I'm going to have to work on this in a bit of a convoluted method. I'm going to leave the frogs separate from the base to get at their angles a bit easier, and paint the base separately as well. Once that's done, I'm probably going to glue them down to the base and try concealing the seams between the edge of the frog bases and the display base by putting some extra sand and rocks down there.
This is mostly a painting project for me, really. The models are more than adequate for what I need, and my girlfriend loves frogs - she actually has a couple
fire-belly frogs of her own, and I'm going to be trying to emulate their patterns onto these guys.
