Happy Holidays from Mengel Miniatures!

With the holidays in full swing I thought I would take it easy and just share a fun holiday project I worked on as a Christmas present for my mother-in-law. What do you do with 8+ years of caked on paint on your palette?

There is a type of jewelry here called Fordite. It is made out of the layers and layers of automotive paint that's left on the floors and railings of the spray booths in the auto plants. My mother-in-law has really wanted some, but it is also very, very expensive. This is where my paint palette comes in.

After 8+ years of not cleaning off my palette I had a solid layer of paint almost an inch thick. Almost jokingly I suggested that we could make something similar to Fordite out of it and my wife agreed that it would be a great idea. After carefully scraping the paint off of the tile I had been using as a palette using some warm water and a paint scraper I set to work.

The first thing I did was cut out a rough rectangle from the thickest section. I then trimmed this down a bit more and shaped it with a knife to be in a bit more of a pendant shape. After that it was a simple task of taking a couple pieces of sand paper at different coarsenesses and sanding away. It looks the coolest when you can round it a bit to really show off all of the different layers of paint.

I also cut out a second one just to see what colors I would get from it. Once I had these in the shapes I wanted I drilled a hole near the top of them with a pin vice and gave them a few coats of 'Ard Coat.

The very last thing I did was add the ring and chain to make it into a necklace. My wife suggested we call it Mengel Miniaturite and add a little card and it was all set!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's particularly cool for me because I can look at it and think about what each of those colors represent. I see a lot of my Nurgle stuff near the top, and on the bottom it's either my Tomb Kings or my Astral Claws Space Marines. It's like a little time capsule of all of my painting projects. I still have a bit of the paint from my palette left so I may make some smaller pieces including a much smaller pendant for myself.

I should be back my typical coverage next week, until then Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Tyler M.