Booooooooooonnnneeeessssssss and stuff

Hello again,

sorry for my late reply. I've been really busy the last days. And my left toe is aching...yeah, yeah whatever...

Over on tutofig I found a link to a tutorial on Martas blog (http://twistedbrushes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/little-bones-for-basing.html) about real animal bones for basing. Hmmm realll boooonnnnesss yummieee!

Didn't find them on ebay, so I googled owl pellets and found some in a store, where  I would have had to order for 100 euro minimum...hmm...no thanks... I gave ebay a second chance and tried ebay.co.uk because on the blog it says Marta is living in london town. SUCCESS!! I found them under the name "wild barn owl pellets", 6 pieces for 5 euro cheap in comparison to the other store I found (were about 30 Euros for six pellets). The only thing was, that the cheap ones weren't steril...but I read on the internet that sterilizing them only means to treat them with boiling water.

So when they arrived I waited till the weekend for the mission "sterilization nation". As I am a little too careful/sissy-minded I've put on gloves, a papermask and safety goggles too open the package (couldn't tell before opening the package if they were just lying in there or safely packaged). They were securely packaged in there. And also there was a note which said "for sterilization put them in a freezer for at least 2 days". ABORT, ABORT, ABORT MISSION "STERILIZATION NATION" NOW!

So I've put them into a freezer and as I visited my parents the weekend after that I finished mission "sterilizaton nation" yesterday.

Again I've put on gloves, papermask and safety goggles.

 I opened the small package.

See how small the pallets are, the coin is a 2 euro coin. So as I said that I'm sissy-minded I cooked the pellets for ten minutes in stead of just spill some boiling water over them. It smelled like old socks or wet dog or dog breath, I'm not sure but I've smelled it before. But as I studied chemistry and worked at a company that does food analytics, I'm used to much worse smells.

Afterwards I tried to filter the water and as I didn't have filters I took kitchen paper...nahh didn't really work. So when I got rid of most of the water I started to pick up the bones with a tweezer and put them into a bowl with fresh mountain water....okay just water. I cleaned them by puring the water out and leaving the bones in and filling the bowl up with fresh water. Did that a couple of times until I spilled the bones over sheets of kitchen paper. Then again I put the bones into a bowl with fresh water and picked the bones up one by one with a tweezer and put them into another bowl to get rid of the last remaining "sand" or whatever it was. Done that I pured some airbrush cleaner over them and that's the way I left them until I'll use them.

See how weeeeee they are? Most of them are rip bones I think and they are thinner then every sculpted bone I've ever seen. One of the squares under the bowl is about 1cm.

I'm really looking forward to use them for my projects.

Ah and before I forget some WIP pictures (which are not up to date...sorry for that) and the gift I gave last weekend to a friend who became 30 years old. The thought was that when you turn thirty you need to give your arguments some serious backup...

(The sound effects and the light are awesome!)

So have a nice weekend and read you soonish!