So I wanted to tell you all a quick story.
I wanted to surprise my wife this Christmas with something I thought she’d appreciate and wouldn’t think that I’d be able to get for her.
You see, she’s been on a HeroForge kick of late. She’s been designing characters left and right. She’s even had the kids design their own characters for our home campaign.
Of note, however, was one she designated “Sky,” her air genasai bard. She absolutely fawned over this design, wanting to play her in our next campaign.
I took careful note of this fact and filed it away for later use.
Then it happened: the perfect storm. She was busy, away from her laptop, and unlikely to show up while I did my thing. Oh, I was slick, Dear Readers!
I got on to her laptop, logged into her HeroForge account, bought the STL file, emailed it to myself, and deleted all evidence of it, down to deleting the emails in her trash.
I contacted a dear friend of mine who had been printing Battletech minis for himself and me to use when we play said game. I asked and he delivered…the Sunday before Christmas, three copies: one flawless copy exactly like the original picture, one flawed copy of the same (it had a strange flat section under the arm so I would have to create an elbow with green stuff), and a mirrored copy of the same.
In a previous conversation, I had told her that if she ordered it, which I told her she should but she declined, that I wouldn’t be willing to paint it for her. she told me that under no certain circumstances did she want me to paint it for her. That bothered me. But I let it go.
Remember how I ordered three copies? Well, I did this for a reason. I fixed and painted one of the flawed copies, the one that was exactly like the original flawless one but with the missing elbow. I fixed the elbow. I primed the mini. And I began my painstaking labor of love to paint it. Here are my steps of progress although I did not take a lot of pictures along the way.
As you can see, at the end I added dull coat to finish it off.
I had exactly one day where my wife was out of the house most of the day to work on it. One day. I worked on that thing for over 9 hours.
I can honestly say, that this was a labor of love. I still have parts of my neck and shoulders that hurt! But it was worth it.
I hope you enjoyed seeing this as much as I enjoyed painting it and seeing her face once she got to see it.
Until next time, Dear Readers…
P.S. – we haven’t really been playing so I don’t have too many games to report on. I will post what little we have played over the Christmas break at a short time later.
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