Healing Potion
For a long time I’ve thought of using real glass in my miniatures. Whenever I see a model with some kind of container holding liquid I think what a shame it is we can’t use real glass. The trouble is finding something small enough to fit the bill. This particular item will be hanging from the belt of my Winged Doombull once he’s finished and painted up.
It started out as the smallest glass item, a jam jar in fact, I could find online (from a Dolls House company called Miniature Marvel) and measures 11mm tall and 6mm wide. Originally I had envisioned it actually having liquid in it but something I didn’t factor in was surface tension; turns out you miniaturise the behaviour of liquids 😛
Instead I had to settle for filling it with paint. I knew that I only wanted it half full to help show off the fact that it’s glass. I used Games Workshop’s and old Red Ink, very carefully placing a couple of drops at a time at the bottom using a straightened paper clip and letting it dry before adding more. I had to be very careful not to get any paint on the sides as I was lowering it in, because the liquid surface tension meant it would just stick to the side and not run down to the bottom. Unfortunately, I failed this a few times and after cleaning the ink up as best I could I was still left with a little splatter effect in the top half of the jar.
The whole process took a few days and once the ink had built up inside the edges I pushed in some Brown Stuff modelling putty to fill in the space before applying more ink over the top. I used Brown-Stuff simple because of it’s colour. Finally the cork was made with a piece of Brown Stuff also.
The final thing can’t be added to the model until it’s painted and varnished and even then I’ll have to fix it with something other than super glue (I’m thinking wire, made to look like string). This is too big to use on any human type miniature but it works great for my Doombull and I expect would look awesome on an Ogre Lord or Hero.
Next I might try looking for some thin glass tubing or even a plastic alternative to use on Fabius Bile’s Chirurgeon.
