Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 3 December 2012

Beds and Backache


These last few weeks I've been fairly incapacitated with back problems, necessitating large periods of time lying on my back to recuperate. Progress on my zombie project has been next-to nothing, but a couple of months ago I made the prototype for some beds I would be making. Since then I haven't had the opportunity to show the progress I made with them, until now.
The top two photographs show the prototype (and a WWG bed) and the batch of beds I made.
Construction of the all the beds followed the same pattern, more or less with a bit of variation here and there.
The body of the bed was a piece of foamcard, though any similar material would do, corrugated card or cork tile for example.
This was wrapped in a piece of tissue. I used both toilet paper and kitchen roll as they have different patterns on them and are very useful aids to detailing the models.
The headboards and foot boards are a piece of card with a short bit of matchstick glued about 1cm from the base, this will support the body of the bed. For the pillows I rolled some tissue into a "sausage", glued and cut it to the size of the pillows I needed. For the sheets and blankets the tissue was cut into a strip about the length of the bed them wrapped around the bed and glued in place (mostly on the underside of the bed's body ). This phot shows some of the tissue texture and the rolled tissue used for pillows.
Not all of the beds I made were in pristine condition, looking like they had just been made, because that would have been fairly boring, even if a little easier to do.
I found that having to design different headboards for variation much more of a pain and I ended up with quite a lot looking very similar, if not identical, but it doesn't really bother me.
What does bother me, the bit I don't really like about having made all these things, is having to paint them !
 Here's as far as I got painting them, before boredom set in and I had to move onto to something else. The idea is that I'll finish of individual beds as I need them, they mostly need shading highlighting and varnishing.
I'm really not that creative with my colour combinations  and en-masse they all look very samey, but individually I think they're OK.
Currently painting of any sort other than with a three inch brush, has had to be put on hold as my eyesight  have deteriorated enormously in the last nine or ten months,  probably due in no small part to age and accelerated by the medications I'm taking. So, in the next two months or so I expect to have two operations which should enable me to see what I'm painting once more !

That's it once more for this week it only remains for me to welcome my latest follower Shintokamikaze - "Welcome !".
All comments are, as ever,  welcomed and appreciated.

27 comments:

  1. They look pretty good from your photos, Joe.

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  2. They are absolutly super. I have got to make some of them. Really good! Thanks for the ideas.

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    1. Great to know thatyou're thinking of making some, make sure we get to see them.

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  3. Wow! I really like the way you build furnitures and sceneries, it's something I not good at...
    Excellent work.

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    1. Thanks Gnotta, but believe me when I say if I can do it, anyone can.

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  4. This is a great, simple technique to build beds. Thank you for sharing it!

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    1. I'm glad you like it and it's cheap too !

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  5. Very nicely done. They'll spice up your indoor terrain for sure.

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    1. Thanks Adam, they're a lot better than my card efforts.

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  6. Sorry you have a bad back, it's no fun at all. (But that you already know).

    Beds look great, I like the textures and the varety.

    The thing I like most is that you can (unlike me) stick to one project. I only wish I could, I may get more finished and less started!

    Nice one Joe, chin up!

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    1. Unless you're classifying all the stuff in my z-projetc as one project then like you I can't stick to doing just one thing at a time.
      On the other hand if I still have unfinished Gangster, Sudan, and Peking 1900 project all on hold. (The latter is now an "ongoing" project of more than 10 years !)

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  7. Another triumph of simple but effective model-making!

    Sorry to hear about the health issues; I really hope the situation improves somewhat in the future.

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    1. Thanks for that Colgar, I like simple (and as mentioned previously -cheap ! )
      I'm used to bouts of back ache, having had to suffer them now for about 40 years. I'm sure my situation will improve soon.

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    1. Thanks DJ, I hope others will give it a go too.

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  9. Sorry to hear about your back sir. The beds look great very nicely made.

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    1. Thanks Brummie, my advice would be "Don't get old".
      I'll be more pleased when I've finished buildings to put the beds in !

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  10. Get well soon with the back mate!!!


    You really are on a roll with all of this!!!!

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    1. Thanks LS for the well wishes.
      I'm looking at doing some tables next - how difficult could they be ?

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  11. Ah sorry to hear about your back pain! I hope it starts to feel better soon :)

    On another note, great work on the beds! They look great!

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    1. Thanks Rovanite, but when I eventually need hospital beds I know where I'll be getting them.

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