Happy Christmas and best wishes

As I had not so much time during the last weeks, I hope to finish some of my dioramas during the next days.

For you as you read this, I wish you some nice days of, only the best weather and a lot presents.

Merry Christmas to all!

on my working bench at the moment

As I had to slow down everything over the last weeks I will give you an update 
about what should get finished after Thanksgiving.
My next diorama will show two of my favorites: tanks and bunker!
I found an old printout from an internet page where they described Belgian 
bunkers. Yes they had bunkers too. Not that much likes the French with their 
Maginot Line or the Germans with the Westwall or later with the Atlantic Wall.
Besides the fortification of Eben Emael they had bunkers at the most important 
bridges and railways on the border to Germany.
So I sketched one of these bunkers with two heavy MGs. The bunker is made 
out of one piece of foam. The landscape is done with gypsum.
I made a mould so that I can use it several times.
After drying I painted everything with with tea!
Yes, I took tea bags and pressed them on the gypsum to color it. As I drink a 
lot of tea, I do not have problems with the supply chain.
More as soon as I have decided which tank will be on the road to Belgium.
So here some pictures of the unfinished diorama:

Verlinden Bunker in 1/144 - or - Somewhere in Italy

No Verlinden is doing any bunkers in the scale 1/144. But somehow I liked this bunker even I do not think that the Germans anywhere had a similar bunker. 

In Italy they do not enough time and material to build up their defenses with the REGELBAUTEN (that's the name for all bunker types the Germans developed and used during the war), and they used a lot of the bunkers and defense types the Italians had. So let's say, there might something like the Verlinden type have been possible.

The foundation is a piece of MDF on which I clued the poster board I used for the rest. The bunker is designed from some pictures I had from other dioramas where people built this bunker. Some minor details I changed. First of all, my bunker has on the front side no door to a lower level, but I added a much more important detail. All German AA-positions had on the side openings where they had the ammunition. So I added them by sticking some brown painted pieces of paper which I tried to engrave a bit. Just writing this I saw that I forgot the second steps to the top level, so my soldiers have to make a bigger step. Things like this happen.

The AA-gun is from SouthWest and the Mercedes truck is from PanzerDepot.

All German soldiers are from Dragon and I had to paint them.

So here some pictures:

Stopping for Some Water in the 1/144 Dessert

As the desert has always been my favorite campaign, here an unfinished small diorama.

The foundation is made of a Dragon box. To get a dessert ground, I put glue on it and spread fine sand over everything. Once the sand has dried I started with the houses.

The houses have a wooden core which I cover with a kind of clay. The rest of the red color you can see on the picture is from that clay. Once you have modeled the houses, I put them in the oven to be heated for around 20-30 min. Now you can paint them.

The fountain is made out of the same material. To get the round shape I used a pencil.

This project was more a test for me to learn how to use this clay for house building.

So I hope you like my very small African village.