Cobblestone Bases with Sculpey MkII

At the end of last month I took a trip home to Australia for a game or two of Warhammer 40k (among other things!). Shortly before this I re-based nearly all of my Blood Angels using my previously created Cobblestone Bases. With a heavy* basecoat of red to match the heavy* undercoat of grey on the bases the whole army really started to look the part, and ready to take to the field in anticipation of a new edition and new codex on the horizon. Needless to say the boys in red performed quite well, assisted by my Imperial Knight, and were given a run for their money by a much faster Dark Eldar coven and in another game suffering horrible losses at the hands of a Space Wolves drop pod detachment.

(*I have since attended a painting class to find my spray technique needs refining, more on this next post!)

However, now that it has come time to paint the bases I have found the gaps between cobblestones quite large, and not at all easy to conceal with a patch of grass or careful highlighting and shading. Not wanting to scrap the entire basing set and start again, I have instead refined my process using a slower drying wood glue to fill the gaps and reduce the amount of superglue on the fingers (ouch!), and will continue to base the rest of the army in this newer style.

Starting with my usual Sculpey "bricks"...

...I then clip or shave the edges to match the base size.

After this point I diverge slightly in the form of Wood Glue, applied using and old brush, then wiped off using a damp sponge. This removes the glue across the face of the blocks but leaves the "cracks" full of glue which the fine grit adheres to in the following steps, before being wiped clean by hand of brush/sponge depending on how messy you want to get! 

Brush on...

...wipe off...

...dunk...

...then wipe clean.

To this I have been dressing up the edges with some more grit, this time applied using superglue for a more durable hold, and scraping away any excess with a sharp knife to create a defined edge. I always like a black edge to my base and didn't want the grit to cover this chamfered face completely. I have whole bucket load of these new bases ready for this weekend's Blood Angels bits box extravaganza (I have been raiding more than one friends' bits box to create some new models) but in the mean time I used them for a small squad of Iron Hands, and impulse purchase from a games store toward the end of my holidays. Any excuse right? I can't wait to try out a newer "black armour" painting technique on them!