Two and a half weeks later!

Strange title to my post you might think, not really this is the time its taken me to get all the current batch of Flames of War models completed.

I have not posted much lately, same reason as I have not painted that much recently either, apart form the aforementioned FoW models,.  I had just been too busy with packing parcels of merchandise for Fanderson sales and doing all the GCN work I took on, mind you that said I have been some what productive this last few weeks, with around 100 parcels packed and posted for Fanderson Sales and around 30 odd clubs back on the GCN club list, not the mention the dozen or more I am currently dealing with, so finding time to do anything for myself was proving difficult.  Oh and not to mention going to Scotland for week in mid June.

We go to a holiday cottage on the Solway firth coast about 45 minutes away from Dumfries, usually once per year, the cottage is owned by my wife's cousin, in a small village called Southerness.  The week before we went the weather forecast was for absolutely awful weather, with wind and rain.  So I packed a load of paints and my US tanks, as well as plenty of reading material, I was not going to be bored.

Funny thing was we left the really foul wet weather on the M6 just after Carlisle and did not see any bad weather until we hit the M6 at Carlisle a week later, the weather was dry, some cloud and a few really sunny days, which meant that me planned painting session pretty much went out of the window, bummer a coupleof days rain and I would have a load of US tanks finished!  Not to worry we had a good week and the batteries were recharged.  On one of our trips out I managed to pick up some more useful books from a really good second hand bookshop in Kirkcubbright, I have visited this particular shop three times now, and this trip was as good as my previous visits, I came away with three books, one of them was a really useful book on WW2 Allied vehicles with loads of colour plates, dead handy for reference for the project that I was working on, US armoured vehicles. 

So not much painting was done in Scotland, and the time went so fast, we went on so many walks, our two Greyhounds started to refuse to go out, unusual for them, mind you they loved galloping around on the beach every morning.  Home and more work was waiting, loads of mail and parcels to pack, what I needed was a plan, and some good time management to allow me to get cracking with my own model projects, I wanted to get all my US tanks finished.

So week one, the last week in June saw the dogs being walked at 7.00am, followed by two hours of tank painting, then a couple of hours packing parcels, a couple of hours doing GCN work and then back to painting the tanks again for another couple of hours. Late afternoon get the dinner prepared for my wife coming home from work, then another couple of hours painting after dinner and the tea time dog walk..  Blimey I was rattling through these tanks and no mistake.  Mind you the weather was so bad and wet that I did not leave the house apart from walking the dogs for the best part of a week.

Week two, now into July carried on pretty much the same, but I slowed down a bit on the tank front as I had other jobs that needed doing and a couple of figure building commissions to do for a comic shop in town.

Fortunately both the Fanderson and GCN side of things slowed down a bit and I could once more concentrate on the tanks, it was ll going so well then after on eof my monthly trips to Nottingham for a meeting with Battlefront Miniatures I calle dat Maelstrom Games on the way home and ended up with another six tanks, a box of M4A3 76mm Shermans and an M32 TRV, so that added a couple more days to get the tanks painted.

Thursday 12th July saw me finish the tanks and get them photographed and uploaded to my Facebook album.

Time for a rest, not likely I have now started painting the staff, observer, command teams and a few other bits and pieces, not to mention a platoon of 3" towed anti tank guns.

Ah well onwards and upwards, although the SAGA Viking warband is calling for some attention.......