LittleBluberry

Any orders shipped in the US or Canada are being sent by UPS if possible. As I understand it, only packages that must be sent via USPS are going that route. Thanks! I know that this was certainly true for the non undertaker rewards and it would make sense that it is still the case: I am trawling around trying to work out the slow pace of shipping the RoW rewards.Like I've said: the official explanation for the delay based on USPS refusing to send a truck (as the sole means of RoW delivery) does not make sense when rewards are being sent out at the rate of a handful every day. The presumed idea from the forum that as many as possible eg 156 to Europe getting sent out every Friday because USPS are only sending a small truck weekly also doesn't make sense in the light of the ad hoc shipping we're seeing. I'd like to believe that the reason we're still waiting is because USPS is messing our friends in Reaper around. However it seems that if they are, they are doing it in a different way to the one we've been told about. Of course if I've missed something in concluding this I'd love to be proved wrong! Honestly I don't *know* that they're using UPS for undertakers, but here in the US when I see a store getting a shipment of new stock it's almost always UPS. Sending packages over a certain size is rarely done with USPS, they're not particularly well equipped to do it and it costs a small fortune. I could ask my FLGS that is awaiting an Undertaker pledge to find out for certain.

Any orders shipped in the US or Canada are being sent by UPS if possible. As I understand it, only packages that must be sent via USPS are going that route.

Indeed, I have a friend in Western Canada and she is now in UPS limbo because no one is quite sure where the Western Canada orders have gone. (Eastern Canada deliveries seem just fine, apparently.) Which means that Western Canadian orders, which shipped before the ROW shipments started, are somewhere in UPS's hands with no tracking info and no predicted delivery date. Meanwhile, they get to hear about people all over the world who are now receiving their Bones with no customs problems. So, yeah, waiting for a delivery sucks. And UPS is incompetent a large percentage of the time. And USPS is in a bad way with the government telling them to cut their budget to the point that their performance is suffering. I wish there was something I could do to help everyone out.

Something I've noticed with the Flit I started painting a while ago is that the simple act of putting paint on it and letting it sit on my shelf for a few weeks seems to have stiffened it a bit. I don't know if that's because the paint is acting like a sort of exoskeleton or if the paint has soaked into the plastic of the mini, but I've got a sneaky feeling that the Bones material is going to stiffen up over time for a lot of the models. (Not to the point of being metal though, obviously.) A dip in near-boiling (fresh from a kettle) water and then an ice-water dip improved the stiffness of my fire giantess' spear a great deal. But I also noticed that just taking her out of her plastic baggie seemed to make a difference. I'm not sure whether she was originally super-soft from being in a warm delivery truck or what. Does anyone know if there's potentially off-gassing happening? I know a lot of plastics do become harder and more brittle over time and that off-gassing is common on lots of household products, especially vinyl. Currently I have 3 Bones in progress, 1 from the Kickstarter Vampire set and 2 of the originals. Painting them felt awkward when I started, but is less so now. My adult son is on his 4th Bones mini and loves them, but he is only doing them for tabletop use. I'm personally thinking that Bones are ideal for tabletop, and not so much a display option. I'll be stocking up on Bones monsters and using the much larger metal catalog for PCs, I think.

My frustration is that I have half-painted minis being worked on by four different people on the little shelf at my desk, and it's getting really crowded. It also can be a bit intimidating when someone else finds the time and energy to get some painting done when I'm not. I think I need a more secluded paint area.

Put off dividing the sets until he's done some painting... If he's still that keen after getting a bunch finished, you'll be so proud of him you won't mind sharing. ;) Edit: Oh, and after opening my goodies I find I regret getting the Pathfinder dragon. It just seems so small, and I think I would have been more excited with Deathsleet or the bone giant or something. Guess I know what I'll be shopping for later...

Whenever I have a package with tracking shipped by USPS the tracking is really useless. It will say nothing more than the package was picked up until it's delivered at my door. Now if the package fails to arrive, *then* the tracking becomes useful.

Lots of craft stores have beads. Personally I have used clear glass beads as agitators, they are similarly inert. No ill effects noticed yet, and they've been in the bottles for years now.

Then you should setup an Etsy account and get cracking. That would be a cool backup or a present for my daughter. *nods* Yeah. There are lots of Etsy shops that sell knitted scale dice bags, I just couldn't bring myself to pay the premium to have someone else knit it for me. (My wrists also couldn't handle the output required to start a shop of my own.) If you're having trouble finding one, try the search term "knitted scale maille dice bag". And if you want to persuade a knitter you know, The Ring Lord is the manufacturer of the scales most people use.

If I hadn't already figured out how to knit scale-mail dice bags I might be tempted.

And now the ticker is going offline... I feel sort of sad about that happening before the numbers reached zero... From Facebook: Due to USPS policies, our tracker data is very out of sync. We're going to take it down now. Goodbye tracker! You were fun!

Nicely done, especially the scroll. And the base.

What colour was the cloud giantess' hair? You don't see a lot of blue metallics, and I'm addicted to sparkly things.

Oh bother. Does this mean if I get the HD paint set direct from Reaper I'll have glue issues as well? I had my eye on the set partly just for the case, but stickiness drives me nuts.

As I recall, once they started actually shipping they found it was more efficient to have the team work on both ends of the list towards the middle. Something to do with how many scanners they had. Less time wasted benefits everyone, right?

Oooh, I guess my latest purchase is also stamps from Happy Seppuku's Kickstarter. (Before that was sanding needles and a few resin bases.) Big on my wishlist is HD Paint Set 2. Basecoating Bones takes a lot of paint, and the HD paints seem to fit the bill. The earth tones suit the large number of monsters I want/need to get painted. And of course there are a few of the original Bones I'd like to get, and I'm keen to get an extra owlbear & griffon.

I don't know about Reaper, but Vallejo makes gloss & semi-gloss. I sometimes use a touch of gloss on top of metallics to make them look more shiny/sparkly.

What sort of ultrasonic cleaner are you using? Is it one of those for cleaning jewelry?

How long did the paint dry? Sometimes paint looks and feels dry, but hasn't cured properly yet. I did have a similar problem on the wings of my test Flit, but I cleaned the bare areas with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol and repainted (several coats). It seems much more durable now, but it's also been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks since I last worked on it. The paint was very thin before, and now seems much more solid.

@ShadowRaven, my husband does the exact same thing with accents, maybe it has to do with growing up in Alberta? @Anne, I wish I could just stop by and say 'hello'. I remember when we moved to the USA from Canada it felt pretty lonely, and that was with 3 kids to chase around. Hopefully you will be returning home with good results, not bad ones.

^ This sums up my opinion as well. If you need to reposition something after gluing it I would suggest trying a hairdryer on low first.

There were some games on the Nightmare Night episode that would be easy to replicate... Stuff like bobbing for apples (biting them off a string might be less messy) or a rice bag toss. Oh, and a looooong time ago my son and a friend would pretend to be dinosaurs by making 'tails' out of scarves tucked into their waist bands. My little girls would be jealous of your party plans if I let them see the pictures. :D

FYI, I made my 1" tray at 12 x 15.5 for $6. I picked up the foam locally. If your case is 6" deep, thent that's $36. The bad news is that shipping tends to be expensive if you're ordering online. I can send you a link if you want, but Walmart sells Upholstry foam in big enough sheets, I think, for the reaper case for around the same price. How did you cut your foam? I know from painful experience that cutting foam can be more difficult than it appears. (Also, what did you use for the underside of the tray?)

Please let us know if you find a way to get different trays. I checked out his site shortly after I got my cases, but his site is also a little hard to navigate. I mean, there are "Reaper" trays, but it's hard to tell if those fit this case or the Kickstarter ones. No measurements are included, so it's more work than I currently have time for.

This hit my radar at exactly the wrong (right) time... I'm a basing newbie and don't want to add a lot of time to finishing a mini given how slow I paint. <sigh> In for a penny, in for $60... Now I'm sitting with their Kickstarter page open, hoping we get to unlock more accent designs...