I have finally completed the Giant, and only about four days behind schedule. For the base, I just painted the rocks and wagon wheel that were pre-sculpted, painted up three little rats to help tie him in to the Skaven theme, and glued flock on. I may go back later with some static grass and put a few clumps of that on the base, but for now it looks good. I don't want to clutter the base up too much. I actually had about six rats picked out to go on the base, but decided to cut back a little to avoid crowding them all together. I was able to do some multi-tasking while I finished up the Giant. I had some other miniatures that needed clear-coating and basing, so I worked on the Giant, the little rats, and the Poisoned Wind Globadiers in stages, so I didn't have to waste a bunch of time waiting for paint to dry.

I also used my wife's new Hot Glue Gun on this project. I didn't want to attach the small rats to the Giant's base until they were painted, as I didn't want to be reaching my brush around the Giant's legs to get good painting angles. I used little dabs of hot glue to attach the rats to regular slotta-bases for painting. When I was done, I just pulled them away from the glue and stuck them on the Giant's base. It worked out pretty well.

I'm not sure what my next project will be. I probably should assemble and paint up my unit of Clanrat Slaves to finish out the 2250-point Skaven list, but I've been thinking about working on my Warlord armies, even though I don't have all of the miniatures for any of them. I'll probably end up working on my Skaven, as I really want to get the army finished out to 3000 points. I have several boxes of Orcs and Goblins that I want to get started on, but I don't want to work on Orcs and Goblins until the Skaven are done. Anyway, there are a lot of projects vying for attention.

My wife and I went to the mall in Nampa today because there is a new hobby store there that I wanted to check out. The store is pretty small, and carries pretty much the same things as the Boise Hobbytown, but with smaller selections. They do have a calendar of events, though, with some sort of gaming going on every day. While we were there, the gaming tables were covered with RC cars, with various people working on their cars and looking at other people's cars. The reason I really wanted to go check out the store was because they were listed on the Reaper Miniatures website as participating in some of the Reaper programs. They do apparently participate in Reaper's mini of the month painting contests and Paint-and-Take programs. I was too late for this month's Dwarf painting contest, but hopefully they'll run another one for next month.

We also visited the pet store, which had some reptiles for me to look at. They had a Russian Tortoise, some boas, and a couple of other snakes. I also had a major brain-fart when we were looking at the puppies. The puppy cages were situated in a room behind a glass window. I leaned in to get a better look at one of the dogs and completely forgot about the glass between me and the cage. I ran my face right into the glass. My wife had a pretty good laugh about that one.

We also stopped at the fabric store to get some stuff for my wife's craft projects and for a felt-board for the kid's class we teach at church. I went off looking for gaming supplies and found some foam that would've been perfect for making a transport box for my miniatures. Unfortunately, it was $20 for a 24" x 36" x 2" block of it. A little rich for my blood, although I may have to break down and buy some of it at some point. It's the only time I've seen that sort of foam anywhere, and I've been looking for a long time.