Another brick in the wall -and Blog Anniversary!

Though it looks like that in recent times I'm having my share of lemons in life, that's not keeping me totally away from miniatures and stuff. Slowing down my path, maybe, but not preventing me from keeping on updating the blog. I won't be whining over here, but rather look for the silver lining, and the thing is that I have some more stuff to show. So let's go!

Following with the mining town board, I had to complete the walls before I could build the central section. You may have noticed those doors up on the wall. Wow, how will the neighbours get there?

Disencouraging visitors since... well, always

I built the platforms with some sprues as handrails:

No wonder the landlord never gets there for some cleaning

So, in a very preliminary first step, this was my approach:

It can get complicated when you come back from the supermarket with the bags

Next thing to do was the pavement on the street. I decided I didn't want just mere sand, but some gritty, old, unattended cobblestone, quite in the way I built my Shadespire boards. So same way to do it, using DAS putty and a rolling pin.
Yes, you may have already adverted the problem. I already had the streets placed, so it would be impossible for the rolling pin to... well, to roll. Given that planification seems not to be my superpower, let it be adaptation & improvisation. I cut a piece of paper the size of the street and placed the putty over it:

Totally irregular, not even trying it to be plain

Then, the rolling pin:

It will have to do

Then I glued the paper directly to the foamboard:

When this thing dries I'll know if it works

Well, guess what? It worked! Hooray!

So I did the same for the other pieces of street

On my Shadespire boards I used mere beach sand to texture the parts with no cobblestone, but it was impossible here, given the size of this board. I would have ended with the whole room covered with sand and I don't need to give the missus even more reasons to get mad at the whole minis thing :D

Instead of that, I remembered I had this GW textured paint, the 'Astrogranite' one, which I had already used for the spaceport that started this project. Let's give it a try:

I gave it a couple of layers to add real texture

I sprayed the whole area and applied a wash with dark brown

Then I could finally add the access stairs to that other door on the wall:

It finally begins to look like the thing I had in mind

Time to tell you about a failed experiment. I wanted to add some colour here, to break the chromatic monotony. I specifically had this kind of image in mind, the colourful Buddhist prayer flags you can see in some places (I believe mostly around the Tibet, but also in many other places over central Asia):

My board will have 103% less vegetation

I thing you get the idea

However, my first attempt didn't work.

Looks like a local fair :(

I have removed them (mere paper glued to a thread) until I find a better way for them to fit in the board; I'll probably weather and torn them a little, to tone down the colour explosion; in the end it was too much. But that will be a matter for another day.
As you can also see, I randomly added signs and posters. The final touch was some thread used as electric wire (or whatever) and a couple of tubes and bits:

So this is the cozy corner

The signs include my infamous 'Keep calm, the Emperor protects' or 'Tranquilitam servate, Imperator custodiat'

I added some flock for life f***ing finds a way. Even here

Most of the signs won't be visible when I keep on building the central section

Finally, with some minis for scale:

I hope there will be room enough for a hand to get there and move the minis when gaming!

This process is painfully slow (and real life hasn't really helped!) but I hope it will all be worth of the time and effort in the end.

On another different issue, as the title says, this week (next wednesday!) is the blog anniversary. Seven years since I started posting my mumblings! Given that I already had this post, I didn't see the point in posting again in a couple of days with no pics at all. I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all again for your constant support; your visits, your comments, your suggestions... They all give me the strenght to carry on with this blogging thing. Thank you, seriously (no, not you, Bola Pelangi bot; in fact screw you, you've been quite annoying). Ahem.

That's all for today! I really hope I can bring some more stuff soon!