Kraken Part 2: Basing Continued

Thanks for continuing to read my drivel!

Tonight's post I am going to discuss an idea that I came across. Now one thing about me, when I get an idea in my head, I tend to go pretty crazy on that idea until I achieve it.  As an example, I am going to talk about microbeads.

I read about these microbeads on another blog that I follow: Sproket's Small World. This guy David Soper has won two Slayer Swords, 20 years apart.  Guy has some of the cleanest and most beautiful smooth blending I've seen and he has some genuinely great ideas on his blog showing the way he does some things.

So as I said, I read the abovementioned blog he wrote about making waves and one of the little things he talked about was these microbeads.  Seems pretty easy to find, thinks me. I'll track some down tonight and order them online!  Three days later and for whatever reason, I could not find the correct type that I wanted to order online in Australia.  It was frustrating the fuck out of me.  I really wanted to get some of these beads because I genuinely feel like they add a lot to the final effect to make them look like actual waves.

Anyway I was just at work and found a little bead shop literally around the corner from me today, trundled over there and lo and behold, at this shitty little craft shop I found exactly what I was after.

In this picture you can see the scale of what I got.  They are ridiculously tiny and for this amount I paid like 12c.  Lol. I spent three days and my lunchbreak to purchase a 12c item.

Anyway so here is the base after adding the melted plastic to create the shape of the waves, and adding some Vallejo water effects gel.

And here, if you look very closely, you can see the microbeads that I've embedded into this first layer.  During each stage of layering on the Water Effects I plan to add a few more, creating what will look like air bubbles or water droplets. I've never done this before, so I've literally no idea how it will come out! 

I left it, went away for dinner and came back to add a second layer of the water effects, more microbeads and painting some of the other details.

And now the final decision before I begin the last layers of water effects, to varnish the edges, add the last layers of pigments and try and unify the whole....  Do I add this tree or not?