Teddy 5: Pinning and other nuisances

I'd pickend up some Tamiya Clear Red as I'd read that was the best way to get some gory blood reds... And I really liked the effect that Klatu.org got on his Teddy.   But after going through all this work to get the badge, teeth, and lips right - dumping another set of colors overtop of what I've done made me very nervous.  If it didn't go on right, there was no way for me to fix it with out starting from scratch.

I threw some on some test skeletons (from Reaper's first Bones set), and was not thrilled with the results. Examples I've read from other painters had all these shades that fresh blood has.  Whereas what I did just looked like... paint.  I obviously needed more time to experiment with this style.

I ran the idea past my family. They convinced me that blood coming out of Teddy's mouth was too over the top.  Given my hesitancy, it wasn't hard to convince me.

That meant it was pinning time!  I hadn't yet glued the insert to the base, but I wanted to make sure the holes were in the right spots. So I pre-drilled some holes in the orphanage base and simultaneously the base itself.  (I would later come to regret doing this.) 

I also shaved some more metal off the pads of Teddy's feet to get him to stand flatter, and headed over to my buddy's house for a night of painting. I figured I'd knock the gluing and pinning process in an hour or less and get to finishing my Stitched Together models.

Upon arriving, I picked up my painting bag, it slipped and I cut open my forefinger with my thumbnail. (I still am unclear how I pulled this accident off.) I started getting real blood on the pentagram that was conjuring Teddy.  A little foreboding...

The gluing process didn't go smooth.  I struggled to get the holes in the base lined up with the orphanage insert before the glue dried.  I eventually used a rubber cement which gave me a little time to do the lining up.  When I finally got that I put Teddy in and tried using extra long pins and bending underneath the base to give the mini more stability.  (NOTE: I got this idea from the very informative HobbyGuy / MiniGirl #36 blog, though it looks like this episode has been taken down.)

But I didn't route out the plastic lips under the base like I normally do when I put my washers underneath. So I couldn't get a clear 45° angle to bend the pins. I ended up putting more elbow grease in and pulled the pins put of Teddy completely. And I scratched the paint off some of the boards. And more blood got on the summoning stone.

So I had to pull the pins out, recut them, and superglue them back into Ted.  This also meant that using green epoxy for extra stability was unavoidable at this point. It would be needed just where the pin was coming out of Teddy and under the base.  The end result was Teddy's feet would not hit the floor flatly. He's sort of levitating there above the summoning stone.  At this point, I called it a night.