Saracens - first of many

Well I decided on a project and heres the first batch. These are six bases of arab speamen. Im basing my army on a FOG seljuk turk list. Im not sure if these are the rules for me but the lists look good. Im currently painting archers and will be moving on to cavalry soon.

Cloth flags

So I was in the "pound shop" killing some time and waiting for a bus. I often go in there as its great for buying bits and pieces for use in wargaming. I had been thinking about cloth flags for my new muslim crusades project and was keeping my eye out for the right cloth... A pack of three dish cloths caught my eye. I liked the criss cross patters of the fabric so bought them and hoped to myself that they wouldnt jam my printer.

Predictably it did and I spent some time fixing the jam. When I finally got it out (I had been quite rough) the thing made a dreadful screeching noise. I had broken it... Luckily my flat m8 has a printer I could have a go at breaking so I borrowed his. This time I put a few dabs of glue on a piece of A4 paper and placed some cloth of equal size on it. I fed it through and the print came out surprisingly well. I then soaked it in some very diluted brown ink. This made the cloth look much more rugged but smudged the print argh!!!

Attempt no 3. (successful)

1 I applied the brown wash to the cloth and cut to A4 size
2 dabbed a few patches of white glue to A4 paper and joined
3 Got a bunch of images from google
4 fed through the printer using basic "windows photo gallery" print function with the "contact sheet" setting. This made a perfect size for 28mm flags. VERY little messing about.
5 cut the flags to size and tore a few fibres off here and there to fray the edges.
6 Glued to flag pole, rolling it up with normal white glue.
7 folded and applied lots of Matt varnish to stiffen.

And that was it. Easy and I think they look quite good. They arnt that rigid though Im not too bothered, They hold their shape well enough but ill keep my eye out for a way to make them more so..

PS 1 of the flags here (the purple on) was made from an actualy war flag image. This meant that it has two hlafs you fold together. I thought this would make it too thick but It was ok. In fact it was perhaps better becuase the glue I used made it more stiff and it is of course, double sided...

Googbye to my ECW Stuff

Well its time to say goodbye to my ECW sots and irish armies. Its sad to see them go but I need to make space for a new 25mm project. Will be putting them on ebay in various auctions if anyones interested.

A base of arabs

Another test base. Enjoyed painting these guys. Used lots of GW washes. Was intersting to see the effect of the black wash over dark grey to make. It makes a nice black with subtle highlights. I then added one more highlight of slightly lighter grey.