Creative Questions: Episode 5

Episode Transcipt

Desiree: Welcome to creative questions. The podcast where we attempt to review various creative projects we ourselves are part of and, or other people’s unique creations in attempt to celebrate the creative inspiration and all of us. I am Desiree Silver, your host owner of New Nerd Novelties and #Own Your Weird Lifestyle Brand.

Liam: And I’m your co-host Liam Hewlett it back out at it again foranother week.

Desiree: How are you doing this week, Liam?

Liam: Oh, last week was rough, but on the upward slope, I guess. How about yourself?

Desiree: The same, a new medication means I’m actually  withdrawing and withdrawing kind of sucks.

Liam: Yeah, I’ve got new meds starting tomorrow basically, but they should be identical to the ones I was on before. So hopefully not much changes.

Yeah. Other than that, what have you been up to this last week?

Desiree: So I finished those chanimail earrings.

Liam: I see that.

Desiree: I have a crap picture there cause I haven’t had time yet to do  the cauldron appearing thing.

Liam: Right. It doesn’t look too bad. Like the picture in the earrings.

Desiree:  Yeah, they look really good. So I was pretty happy with that. I even had to buy earring hooks cause I didn’t, I couldn’t find any of mine. Of course.

Liam: I’m sure you have them somewhere.

Desiree: Yeah, me being me. I probably have a shit ton somewhere, but do I know where no, so these look really good. I liked them and Dori and I will be doing that, that cool cauldron thing, I bought like one of those science fair project backboards.

So we could do it in a place that’s not going to set off the fire alarm. And then my cleaning lady broke it up and put in the recycle this morning.

Liam: Oh.

Desiree: I’m like, I’m really glad I didn’t pay full price for that good thing. I know where I can get another one,

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: A little overly ambitious with the recycling there.

Liam: Yeah. I mean, it’s cardboard. You’re not wrong.

Desiree: And it was close to the cardboard thing, but not in it. So I don’t really blame her, but now I have to go. Dammit. Um, I also was working on, I’m going to make a coffin pillow. Like I did  last time. I got a picture of it, but this time I want to make it like mummy themed. So I’ve been crocheting again.

Cause I thought I, cause I haven’t been feeling well enough to do much. So I sit on the couch and crochet

Liam: I told, I predicted it last week. I said, you doing you’re doing chainmail. You’re going to start crocheting next. And.

Desiree: They’re very, they’re very meditative, especially when you don’t feel well. So yeah, I’m going to wrap up one of those coffin ones that have like little eyeball showing. So it looks like a mummy in the wrong type of coffin. I know they have the sarcophagus, but you know, those don’t really translate that well to stuffed pillows.

So it’s cute. I’m doing cute Halloween. And I think I might do a Dracula one too. Eventually.

Liam: With crocheting, do you think you could make like a little. Like a mummy shaped pillow, right? Cause like, uh, the crochet waive already kind of looks like bandages. Right.

Desiree: I probably could. Yeah.

Liam: Right. If you mixed in different colors of gray and white, you might be able to make like a little wrapped person as a pillow.

Just an idea.

Desiree: Yeah. A friend of mine does the mini ones. I, I, since

Liam: Would be that different from a like shape wise, from a coffin with it.

Desiree: Probably not, but I don’t make crochet coffins. I’m making the coffin out of fabric and then wrapping it with the crochet, the thing with crochet, I like to do it so that I don’t have to count the stitches because if you do, then it’s no longer a stress release because then I take it apart and put it back together.

Liam: But yeah, if you have to mix in a pattern or something like.

Desiree: Yeah, but a friend of mine makes like little emojis and like stuffies and she’s actually given them away for Halloween, like little heads, Jack heads and stuff. And she made me a chess board. Actually, I guess I’ll give you the picture for that later to link

Liam: Uh, crocheted. Chessboard.

Desiree: Yeah, she crocheted me a checkerboard and then both Dori and I forgot how to play checkers. So we’re gonna have to look up cause it’s been so long. I mean, how do you, how do you forget? Not, I mean, honestly, we’re both kind of out of it. We got it, but, but I’m like, how could we forget how to play checkers?

Liam: Yeah, I’ve played chess against Doron within the last like year or two. And that’s like complicated checkers.

Desiree: You played chess against Doron and when was that?

Liam: Yeah. When we were visiting a friend of the family, Carol Mitchell in vernon.

Desiree: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don’t remember how to play chess. I never really learned, but yeah, I had a hard time with checkers. Anyway, I’ll get pictures of that. I’ve got like a little photo booth thing set up. I also got like 33 items on Poshmark set up, which I’m pretty proud of myself. Cause that’s like a hundred words each with a whole bunch of pictures and I have to clean those things.

Cause everything’s dusty.

Liam: That’s what you’ve been doing this last week.

Desiree: And I sold four items altogether and I’ve got three, five star reviews. The other one’s still waiting to get delivered.

Liam: That’s pretty good.

Desiree: Proud of myself.

Liam: Most people don’t leave reviews, so it’s nice to have three out of four people actually do that.

Desiree: Yeah. The fourth probably will. It’s just, she hasn’t gotten it yet.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: And then I also did 500 words for every like that thing for the website. So our idea was to do a hundred words of the actual item. Now, a hundred words that the category is from, and then a hundred words for about the creator. So I did the, about the creator, which is easy.

She wanted a hundred words, but she wanted five different variations of those hundred words.

Still not that hard. Like if you’re talking about yourself, right. That’s our favorite, our favorite subject.

But then, so I did that. That was pretty easy. The hard part is the categories. Now the categories have to have 500 words, a hundred words, five times. How many, how much can you write about hairbows?. So I did pulling my teeth 500 words about hair bows and bow ties because they can be worn as each. So now I have to do that for like the 20 plus other categories I have, but I was pretty proud of myself cause it kind of felt like reading through Tolkien’s 150 pages of concerning hobbits nobody cares except for him.

And he probably enjoyed writing that, but reading, it felt like me writing this five times over.

Liam: I’ve never read the appendices, the appendices for LOTR.

Desiree: It wasn’t the appendices  the first 150 pages of the Lord of the rings “Concerning Hobbits”.

Liam: I also kind of skip that.

Desiree: Iskipped it. Cause you don’t need to. All, all you need to know is hobbits like to eat, farm, F@#$%

Liam: And there’s a big party going on.

Desiree: And drink. That’s all you need to know.

Yeah, I I’ve definitely never touched the, the appendicies though. Like as soon as the book’s over, I’m like cool. Done. That was it.

I think I looked up at the realtionship stuff between Aragorn because I’m like, I’m confused, but that was it.

Liam: Well, I read those books before the movies came out and I never revisited them. So, I wasn’t interested in the appendicies..

Desiree: I don’t blame you.

Liam: But as for what I’ve done this week, like I said, it wasn’t a great week for me.  We pushed back our D and D session.  Cause some of the other guys were either occupied or not feeling up to it.

So he pushed it back. But then we realized that, um, this weekend coming up is Thanksgiving in Canada anyway. And so we pushed it back again. So I’ve got way more time than I need to. Paint my miniatures. So I only painted three out of five. I wasn’t really going hard at it.

Desiree: Well glad because you were really worried about getting them done.

Liam: Well, I mean, I could’ve gotten it done if I really wanted to push myself, but I didn’t need to, like, rather than having like the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, like rather than having three days now, I’ve got like two days, two weeks and three days. So,  way more than I need. I got.

Desiree: If you’re not feeling well, though, at least it gives you leisure time.

Liam: Yeah. Each, each miniature is about like two, two to three hours,  depending how distracted I get while I’m doing it. But most of the time it’s about two hours.  And so I did paint, like I said, I got three of them and I’ve got pictures there in the link dump of the the Moroccan white cloaks is what I’m painting.

They’re going to be dressed for the weather winter, you know,

Desiree: Okay. I’m looking at them now. Yeah, they definitely got lots of like furs and stuff going on for clothes.

Liam: Yeah, the, the middle one, the Moroch is the one with a Fox head.

Desiree: Oh, okay. I see the Fox head Did you have to take that off another miniature?

Liam: Yeah, I got it as a bit in a different sprue, but,  I’m happy with how he turned out. Cause it could have been a lot worse, um, that.

Desiree: mismatched in a bad way.

Liam: Yeah, it’s a more proportional than most beast heads that I have available to me. And that’s why I was so happy to find it. And while that specific beast head doesn’t have much in the way of texture.

So I had to add a lot in the way of like trying to make a fur texture. It’s a little bit too glossy,  for my liking. It doesn’t have much for texture on it.  So like, it could, could be better, but way better than what I thought I would originally have to do. So yeah. I’m happy enough with how it turned out.

Especially whether or not this becomes a large character in the campaign. I don’t know. They might just murder him in their first encounter. So

Desiree: Good bad. I don’t know. He might get murdered. We’re good.

Liam: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll put more attention to him if he survives the encounters.

Desiree: So do we want to talk about this week? I’m guessing we’re going to talk about other makes we’ve made other big makes,

Liam: Yeah. Uh, well

Uh, yeah, it was one of our main talking points about the podcast is our projects. And so far we’ve only done one episode talking about our past projects. So yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got, we’ve got plenty that we can talk about.  The one I’m bringing to the table is, for this week, my modular dungeon and caves.

That I sort of made in an impromptu way for my Dungeons and dragons campaign. So I’ll start off with.

Desiree: Okay.

Liam: So I’ll start with why I made it or how it sort of evolved into something that I needed to make for my Dungeons and Dragon’s campaign. So originally when we started playing D and D about a year and a half ago, now I had a significant collection of Warhammer fantasy, miniatures and terrain.

So that’s all. Large-scale armies and terrain that suitable for large scale armies to interact with such as ruined buildings, craters, forests, swamps, ponds, stuff like that. Very little on the micro scale of almost nothing. In fact, so no crates, barrels, lanterns, torches, that’s the sort of thing that it should be quite necessary for a D and D scale campaign, but is completely unnecessary for tabletop wargaming. So I didn’t have any of it. So a lot of this stuff I had to start collecting. On my own. One of the largest parts of Dungeons and dragons it’s in the name is Dungeons. And there is almost no S time when you have a full-scale army battle taking place in a dungeon, or even a small confined space.

It’s just, doesn’t facilitate troop movement and, and in a fun, or interesting way. So it doesn’t happen in tabletop war hammer that you start crawling around caves or through catacombs and corridors. So I didn’t have any of that available to me. And I knew going into it that if this D and D thing was going to last more than a couple sessions, I was going to need eventually to start making some sort of terrain system so that I could represent these caves and Dungeons and things like that.

I had some leeway in how I set up the campaign. I made it in basically a new world setting so that they more often than not would come into jungle and forest train of which I had an abundant amount. And I had, you know, ruins and buildings and rocks and things like that for them to interact with on the larger scale.

And then I would give myself some extra time to develop those cave and dungeon terrains. So I started off piecemeal doing it one at a time. The first cave that I ever made was for a Viper pit for like our third session or so. The town that the guys are based out of had a bounty for a nest of snakes. And so the guys took that bounty as a small low-level adventuring party is want to do, they are doing odd jobs at that, in that session, they also went to a rock that had a bunch of harpies on top of it to retrieve a hat right there, literally.

Hitting rats for their gold pieces.  So that’s the level of interaction that I wanted to have. So I didn’t need to have like a really large dungeon system all at once. I just needed them to have a cave to go into. And so that’s what I started with. I’ve got just like, I have a cave and I made that. In a way that I will continue to do for the rest of my dungeon systems.

And I took some pink polystyrene, which I used for almost all of my terrain making. And it was a leftover piece of pink polystyrene. Basically, I attached. Leftover pieces of pink polystyrene to make cave walls, and then used a patching compound or drywall mud in order to blend some of the edges and crack fill and then took a dremmel to it, to give some texture to the walls and dry brush it all whole bunch of times.

And that’s all I really had to do. And that’s all I really did do for the remainder of this,  system that I made. But to start off, I only needed that one piece and it was a, it was serviceable I, for a long time, I, I use that piece a lot because there’s a lot of times that you go into caves as a D and D party.

Even if you’re out in the wilderness, whether it be to chase down some bandits that are hold up or to root out an albear or whatever it might. So I used it quite a bit and it was entertaining, especially quite memorable for that first session when they went into the Viper pit and there was a giant constrictor snake that,  would be like two or three times the size of a largest Anaconda in real-world size.

And they murdered that thing without really any issue, but it was the poisonous flying snakes that were also present within this jungle that really gave them issue.

Desiree: I was going to ask if this was the flying snakes.

Liam: Yes. Yeah, this is the, this was the incarnation, the origination of the, the nemesis of the campaign so far being the blue flying snake that they put the majority of their effort, rightly so towards, you know, fighting the big Beastie in the cave.

But these two flying snakes that I also made for the session came in and did some fly bys. One of which got just absolutely destroyed. And then the other one flew in bit the warlock. I believe he, the warlock or the wizard got downed by this poisonous snake. And then it just flew out of the cave. After all the other snakes had been slaughtered, it was doing its fly by.

So it flew out of the cave and you know, it’s the sense of preservation was enough for it. Go out. And they had two full rounds of both melee and ranged attacks in order to try to kill this thing and they couldn’t touch it. And so I got away and it got away and it did more. It did more damage than any other thing in that, in that cave, it literally, it almost killed the warlock.

I believe it was.

Desiree: And you, you just made these snakes for shits and giggles, I think, right. That

Liam: Well, I I’m, I made them for the specific, like,  I really enjoy,  both in video games and in any kind of role-playing the, the low level, like,  grounded. Early stuff that you do right. Where it’s like, you’re getting by the skin of your teeth, you’re killing rats for gold or whatever, right before everything gets really complicated and you get into like a big storyline or there’s motivations behind anything.

You’re glorified, exterminators as low-level adventures. And so that’s why I made the snake pit, right? This is, I give them that experience of like, you’re a low level adventurer. Here’s an odd job. And, it was an odd job that almost killed one of them was great. And oh yeah, almost killed one of them and they didn’t get their revenge.

They had plenty, they had ample opportunity. They just rolled really badly and missed it horribly. And it just left.  So later on, as a running joke in the campaign, because they are quite effective as a party and like healing and damage wise, they’re, they’re a very strong party. And so often times when role-playing comes to an actual battle, they’ll just ACE it.

Right? There’s been few, very few battles where they’ve had to run away because they’ve been out classed. This happened a few times, but most of the time they can overpower whatever come they come across. And so this is like one of the rare instances where something got away. Uh, and so there was a running joke, especially early in the campaign that, that was that flying snake was going to turn into a river and then come back as the big, bad of the campaign.

And eventually I did have it come back.  When the wizard had his Crow familiar, patrolling around and it rolled a natural one on it’s stealth, our perception checks for the check that it was making. And it got eaten by that flying snake later on in the campaign.

Desiree: The smallest things that will turn into memes, because no one would have expected that.

Liam: No. Yeah, I absolutely the thing had like four, six hip points or something like that. They had touched it. It was dead. They just couldn’t meetit’s a.c. For whatever reason. So like that one piece of terrain that I made, just a simple cave, it’s like a two-step cave. I’ve got pictures of it. And the link dump, the first piece that I made, where it’s got like a little raised section that you could either enter from, or it can be an exit out of.

And then the lower section that also has like a much smaller entrance into it. So you could have like a main cave mouth and aside exit, or you could just ignore that side exit and consider it an additional wall.  But even when I did make this first piece, I did have the intention of like, okay, I’m making this, but I want it to, I want to be all add onto it at some point later.

That’s why I made it have more than just one entrance and exit. I didn’t want my first piece that I made to be a dead end. And so later on in the campaign, I started adding to it in order to facilitate new combat encounters, but also to make it so I had more caves available in my arsenal.  As I continued to add to this system, every additional piece that I made, I made with the intention of it, being able to connect to the other pieces in multiple different ways now for the cave systems that I did make, I wanted it to look more natural than not.

And so I didn’t make them with any right angle. Like I didn’t make them with any specific angles or connections in mind. I didn’t want to put them onto a grid. Basically. There’s a lot of rounded edges and things like that, but I made a lot of the walls of these caves have potential entrances and exits, so they could connect to each other in multiple different ways and have different Heights for different things so that they could when put together represent like a larger room or they could be combined into like a chain of cave systems and things like that. So I added too it bit by bit, most of the time for specific combat encounters, I would make a configuration where it’s like, okay, this is for this combat encounter. And then if I needed a random combat encounter, like go into a cave and they find some spiders or whatever. Then I would switch around my existing cave system that I already had. They became a tool of my arsenal and I continued to add to it. I’ve got multiple pieces of the natural caves that I had. And after a certain point, I felt like I was pretty set with the natural caves.

And at least because I didn’t think that the guys would be going into a very long extended journey or adventure into like a natural cave dungeon. So the amount that I had prepared, I feel it is what is necessary, but then they went into atifer hold for an extended period of time, which is the last dwarven city that I’ve mentioned before, that was just a full subterranean dungeon.

And so I’m like, okay, the natural stuff is fine, but. It’s not going to represent. What I want from T for halt for hauled is a dwarven settlement. It’s not going to look rough or uncultured. It’s going to be all masons, right? It’s all going to have to be cut stone and very deliberate. And it’s going to have traps and statues and crumbling debris, and it’s completely different from a cave system.

So I made an additional dungeon system to go with my caves.  And that one again, I wanted it to be modular in many different ways. I wanted it to be able to represent atifer hold in as many ways as I could possibly make it. So I split it up into multiple different parts that could be used as either intersections or coroners or rooms or platforms or whatever it might be. And I just made a whole bunch of it during the time that they were in atifer hold, basically every session I just kept on adding to it so that I could make a new room was filled with traps or new crumbling hallways that they could traverse and added in stone passages.

And all of it was cultured stone and the way I made that effect is I took a very deliberate cuts of the pink polystyrene and made every tile, a one inch square grid by using a ruler and an Exacto knife.  Put down what would be like a DND grid on the floor. And then I did a similar thing with the walls as well, just at a half scale.

I think they’re half inch blocks for each of those. And so, I’ve got the other pictures that I have there of just like how many different configurations I can make on the fly and have done for atifer hall. There’s it’s a very versatile system. Made almost entirely with pink polystyrene and like construction adhesive.

The reason I use construction adhesive to keep all this stuff together, along with like the dremmel and patch filler to fill in the cracks is it makes it a very durable system. I can store this stuff without having to be gentle with it. I throw it around all the time. And that construction adhesive, not only does it not eat through the pink polystyrene, it is. Cheap. Like it’s, it’s not expensive stuff

Desiree: Well, what is, what does it look like? I don’t know about construction adhesive. Oh,

Liam: I it’s what you would get in a caulking gun. I’ve got a picture of the materials,

Desiree: Okay. The caulking gun. Okay. I was looking at that. I’m like, what’s the caulk for?

Liam: Yeah, that’s the construction adhesive. So it comes out like brown and it takes like a full day to dry, but once it dries, it’s super hard.

And it’s actually somewhat difficult to dremmel through, even if you use too much. Oh yeah. If you have too much overfill. But it’s got, at least in my opinion, the best bind on the pink polystyrene that I use, it makes it super reliable. Like I, I very much intend to be using this cave and dungeon system for as long as I’m playing D and D however long that might be.

And I definitely think that the pink polystyrene is going to crumble way before any of the stuff connecting it to itself. Whereas if you use other weaker forms of adhesive, like white glue, for example, it just won’t hold

Desire: Yeah, polystyrene is a pain in the ass to glue together. We had the stuff we called green goo when we were with Klondike Kid Stuff and they had to glue the styrofoam together. Yeah, it was very, very specific and it had to be mixed in two parts and I don’t have a spray gun. And besides industrial, I think that’s probably the best, the best bet you have there.

Liam: Yeah. And the construction adhesive wouldn’t be conducive to like projects like that because they need to not take 24 hours to dry or whatever.

Desiree: Yeah, that was like a three-minute bind. Yeah.

Liam:  And it would probably be like stronger, but like this stuff is cheap, readily available and it’s just way better than the other kind of adhesives that doesn’t, it doesn’t eat through the pink polystyrene.

Right. Cause if it’s anything that’s too caustic than it just won’t work with the, the polystyrene

Desiree: We could probably do a whole episode on glue because even depending, I don’t know if I’m using the right glue for certain projects, either it takes a while to figure out the right adhesives for the right items

Liam: Yeah. And I’m sure there’s an easier way to figure it out than just doing it by trial and error, but that’s how I do it, right?

Desire: Or a lot of people here use this. I’m like, where do I even get that? Like, is that available in Canada? I don’t know.

Liam: That’s that’s actually one of the things I find about, uh, difficult about getting advice from hobbyists in like the tabletop community is very little of their input is from even north America. A lot of their input is from the UK and they just have different materials than we do. So it’s, it’s like even the styrofoam that they use looks different.

Right. You know, like, uh,

Desiree: Uh, that’s not the same stuff.

Liam: Yeah, or is it, I don’t know. I can’t touch it. So I can’t tell. Right. It might be like chemically different rather than just like color as well.

Desiree: we have the white as well. Do they have white and pink or they don’t

Liam: uh, the white and pink are very different products, right? They are a completely different beast. And when I first started in the hobby, I thought they were the same.

Right. And so I use like packing styrofoam because that’s what I had available to me at the house. As a kid, right. There would have been some leftover from something that we have gotten. And so I was like, okay, this is the thing that people were using for the terrain. Why is it so difficult to work with?

It is horrible to deal with. If you’re trying to make terrain, try to try to avoid using white styrofoam is what it’s not polystyrene. It’s styrofoam. Don’t use styrofoam.

Desiree: That’s what we were using in the business I was in. They used the white stuff. Yeah. It’s even worse for melting and yeah. Yeah.

Liam: Yeah, it makes such a mess. It’s so difficult to work with compared to the pink polystyrene, which is just like, it’s so easy in how it, like they’re completely different. But as a kid, I had no idea.

Desiree: And you had what he had on, I mean, really? I don’t even remember ever having really the pink stuff around.

Liam: No. Cause you have to buy it right. It’s used as an installation and it’s not all, it’s not as cheap as you would hope honestly.  It’s one of the most expensive parts of the projects that I do for terrain because I can get,  I use a lot of paint on my terrain, the paint that, on my terrain, I will get oops cans. What they’re called from hardware stores or paint stores where somebody mixes a color and they either don’t like it, or they return it or like part of it spilled or whatever, and they return it. And once a paint has, can, has been tinted, its price gets slashed by an obscene amount because they can’t resell it.

Nobody wants a pre-tinted color. Everybody has a specific color that they want and they want it made for them. So when you, uh, that’s a tip for anybody that wants to get a bunch of paint that you don’t have to, especially because earth tones are very common in house paint,

Desiree: That’s true.

Liam: Right? So if you want those beiges grays Browns, that sort of thing, get oops paints.

You can get like a full gallon or even larger the way they do it at home Depot, which is where I work. The small, like tester cans are $1 for an oops can. When usually they’re like, I think five or six. And for one size above that it’s $3 for a can. That would usually be like a 30 to 40 or something like that.

And then you can go even larger than that. And those ones are generally like 60, but it depends on some of the paint I’ve got is like $90 cans I got for $9 because they’d been tinted all of the ups paint, no matter what it is, it’s priced by size, not by what kind of paint.

Desiree: And the house paint doesn’t eat the polystyrene?

Liam: No. And the house paint almost universally now are paints and primers and one. So you get to use your paint as the primer,

That’s because we’re all lazy and we don’t want to prime and paint.

Yeah, which is great when you’re doing terrain, because again, the polystyrene, you can’t spray primer it. So you are going to have to use a paint primer in some way, shape or form to begin with anyway.

So,  having your first base coat, be a paint and primer and have it be obscenely cheap. You know, super cool. The drywall patching or the drywall mud, that stuff is also super cheap. Whereas the pink polystyrene by sheet, if you’re buying it, it’s like depending on the size. And I gauge that you’re getting, it could be like 60 plus dollars.

Desiree: But that’s for a big piece. Isn’t it?

Liam: It is for a big piece and that can go through multiple different projects and you’re going to use like all of it, because even when you have little scraps and bits and pieces, I turn those into rocks and scattered terrain all the time. So it is something that if you’re making war gaming, It’s just a very useful product to have, and it’s incredibly easy to work with.

It’s also great for other crafts as well. Besides the terrain making, we have a lot of it around the house because our mom likes to make her own decorations for Halloween. And a lot of that will wind up being made. I’ve been polystyrene. It’s just a very versatile.

Desiree: Weird a side note. I actually use a chunk of it for felting. Felting is when you take roving, which is just like the sheep’s wool, but it hasn’t been turned into yarn yet. And then you poke it with these needles that have like barbs on it and it turns it into a condensed felted object. Well, You got to stab it into something and you don’t want to stab it into you.

So you stab it into the pink polystyrene or like a really thick sponge. Yeah. And sponges that are super thick or not like pretty easy to find I found lately. So I’m like, oh, I’ll just take this polystyrene from dad and I’ll stab it to death because it’s safe and it won’t go through to my fingers.

Liam: Yeah, it’s it. Unlike the styrofoam as well. Get the biggest problem with styrofoam is it’s a bunch of like little pellets melted together, basically. And so as soon as you start breaking it or cracking, it just turns into those little pellets and they wind up everywhere. Whereas pink polystyrene is like, it’s a solid thing.

It’s kind of like a melamine, right? The wood version of that, where it’s a bunch of particulates put together. And so for the polystyrene you can take, and I do often I’ll take some sort of edge most of the time, like a dry wall,  Tremmel or something like that. Anything that is like metal with an edge and you can just scrape. You can scrape texture into it and you get

Desiree: Like chisel into it without having to use force.

Liam: Oh yeah, you can, you can sculpt many different kinds of texture, however much effort you want to put into it. You can make whatever you want out of this stuff, especially if you’re willing to put the time into it, you can sand it. You can make it smooth.

You can make it rough. You can get all different kinds of textures out of this.

Desiree: Also with the dremmel. I don’t know if many people know what that tool is. Maybe you can tell him. So, cause that’s a pretty cool artistic tool.

Liam: Yeah.  And when you find pretty often when you’re dealing with like, woodworking,  it’s how best would you describe it? It’s basically like a , it’s a router. It’s a portable router.

Desiree: Handheld router or a drill. It spins in a circle and you put bits on the end of it, which have different sanding qualities.

Liam: And different shapes as well. So you can get a whole bunch of different kind of nubs, but it is like it’s not set into a jig. So it’s dependent upon your own wrist movements to get whatever it is that you’re trying to get out of it.

Desiree: And it’s small and portable and not as hard on the hands. So it’s kind of like using a wood-burning kit as a, like a pen, but it’s slightly heavier.

Liam: Yeah, we’re like a soldering iron, but with drill bits.

Desiree: I want one. I’m glad you guys have one. I’m looking forward to playing with it. It’s good for wood, glass, styrofoam, whatever you want to use it for and just get the right bit.

It’s pretty cool.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: So, well, I guess do you have anything else to say about your lovely thing? There are. We want to go into my creation.

Liam: Yeah, we can go into yours. I think the only thing I like about mine is that like I painted it mostly uniformly, but I’m pretty bad about keeping track of what paints I use. So oftentimes I just wing it with looking at what I’ve already made and then trying to somewhat match it. There are definitely people that are way better at keeping track of what colors they’ve used for their terrain pieces or armies or whatever.  But I’m fi I I’ve always been fine with like, I want as much versatility out of the stuff that I make. And I do make them to be very durable and like long lasting so I can use the stuff just constantly like the guys go into a cave. I wasn’t expecting them to, I can literally pull it out of my ass now.

I don’t have to worry about it.

Desiree: Well, you, as we said before on this as well, you have some pretty good color matching abilities, much better than me anyway. So I guess you can wing it if you want to. As long as it looks good in front of the pictures, I don’t see much of a difference at all. I’ve actually not seen these before they look really great.

Liam: Oh, yeah. Yeah, probably haven’t seen them in action.

Desiree: No, not the ones from the, like the mountain. It just, I think the caves.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: Yeah, really good. I always worried that you cut each piece of those styrofoam individually blocks. That would take forever. All those little blocks on the side. Bricks. Yeah,

Liam: Oh, yeah, no, no. Uh, I, I use a ruler to cut into the styrofoan just to give it that illusion.

Desiree: Yeah, much better.

Liam: Yeah, no, that was already like, I was, I had to go through it multiple times to make sure the, especially after it was painted that they were still distinct. Right. Because the first time I cut them there with an exact knife, so it’s not like it was a really large groove. So I had to make sure I actually went in with the exacto knife and pried them apart a little bit more than just the regular cut would have done.

Desiree: Because the paint would have filled it in.

Liam: Yeah. And the paint didn’t fill it in for.

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: But, yeah, it’s a project that has been ongoing for my D and D campaign. So

Desiree: And it’ll probably keep going.

Liam: It will definitely keep going.

Yeah. When they go into a new area, I will make more stuff for like that specific need. If they were to go into like a necropolis or whatever, right. I would start making a whole bunch of that sort of theme to write.

Desiree: And I, I liked that, that you’re doing d and d now because it never really occurred to me that Warhammer doesn’t have any of those cool locations. Mostly it’s all fields and rubble and stuff. This is kind of fun.

Liam: Oh yeah, this, this would be completely unusable for Warhammer terrain because it’s way too enclosed, right?

Desiree: Yeah. Not for big armies. Yeah.

Liam: Not practical whatsoever, but,

Desiree: There to change over subjects to what I’ve been doing.

Liam: Yeah, I’ve got some pictures here in front of me of that looked pretty cool.

Desiree: So a couple of years ago, cause you know, I’m on the Halloween, spooky, spooky girl and that type I love to dress up. And mom has a Halloween costume party every year. I believe we said that before. So one year I decided I’d be a bride of Frankenstein. So a little bit of history on this costume because I figured when I was thinking back to this, it’s going to take a little while for me to source all the items for you.

But,  I found this one group of people called fright Fest. And what they do is a bunch of BC haunters people who have their own haunts or help with haunts, uh, things like corn mazes and stuff, where they do their own at home thing for the kids. And usually for charity get together in BC once a year to pull off a haunted house together, communally. In August.

Liam: Yeah, on a campsite on a campsite, right? They

Desiree: Yeah, I can’t site and Fort Langley full of mosquitoes, hottest hell in August. And they’ve been doing it for such a long time that the camp, the camp sites itself host a trick or treat for the kids and they want everybody to direct them to dress up. They’re like RV and camping sites with Halloween decorations as well.

And they have a contest for who is the best decorated plot. And so. I went with mom a couple of years. I’m not really made for camping and neither is my husband. So we didn’t, we didn’t really get to go too often, but they have this section where they’ve got one of those camping coveralls. So it’s like a cement base with an overhead and electricity where you can like put your, your campsite,  benches and sit and eat, but a big one.

And so then that was a space where we. These haunted houses. And so we’d have to bring in everything. And every individual hunter would have their own room. We even had to

Liam: They would, cause there were no walls. It was basically like a, an overhead shelter with power. They made their own walls and they separated their own sections.

And our all roof depending, there’s also usually a roof. So like completely enclosed,

Liam: It did not have a roof originally?

Desiree: Not exactly it had a cement slab.
It has a roof roof, but we make our own as well for the haunt, because you want to want it to be dark, right.

Liam: Yeah. And more enclosed, right?

Desiree: Especially cause it’s August it’s bright. So yeah. They’ll even put like black garbage bags over the top so that we have the darkness blackout. And so mum took us a couple of times. There were yurts there.

I don’t know if anybody knows what a year is, but. A tent on top of a cabin with electricity. So it was more like glamping cause they also have showers and bathrooms. Thank God, because if you’re going to wear a Halloween costume with fake blood, I sure hope they have a shower.

And well, we helped out with different themes for a couple different years in each of the individual rooms. And one of the ladies there she likes to hit up the bridal stores to pick up their sample sizes because everybody likes, you know, dead bride, haunted wedding. So one year she brought up suddenly 13 wedding dresses.

That she got from one of these bridal stores and I was getting married. Like I was engaged at the time of like, Ooh. So I bought one off her to actually use as my wedding dress and then mom and I, and everybody else trashed the rest.  Mom wore and she was like a skeletal bride riding on the back of the truck, telling the kids to come see this, this haunted house.

And then they literally got me to drive over a bunch of them a couple times. And like they went through the mud and put blood and rip them all up. And that was like the thing for that. So I gained this like size 10 wedding dress, which at the time fit me and I was intending to wear for my wedding with a couple adjustments.

So I brought that home and the wedding kind of didn’t go as planned and I wore a purple wedding dress. I also wasn’t that size anymore. So I’m like, you know what, I’m going to keep this for like a corpse bride, maybe costumes sometimes. We’ll see, and that was the basis that started out as my bride of Frankenstein home.

I looked at it and went well, I’m not a size 10. I haven’t been a size 10 for a very long time. So let’s rip the top off because that’s definitely not going to fit. And the bottom with that much tafta skirt, I’m pretty sure I can figure out a way to make it fit.

Liam: I guess that’s what we should mention that we are talking about. It is a bride of Frankenstein costume, right?

Desiree: It’s a bride of Frankenstein costume. Yeah. There’s pictures here in the info dump. So this is the skirt portion. And what I did is I, I cut it off and then it will zip all the way up, but that’s okay. I kind of slipped it. And then I decided to paint all the edges, like lime green and cut it up and cut holes in it and make it look more distressed.

And that was the bottom of the, of the costume then for them. I usually use one of my just generic black corset. That’s when they fit, which they don’t anymore. So I am adjusting this costume to be a 2.0 for mom’s Halloween party this year. Cause her theme is a movie monsters and villains.

Liam: Which fits perfectly with bride of frankenstien.

Desiree: Exactly.

So I would wear the corset and then my husband that year was also mummy. He loves egyptian stuff and the mummy movies and mummies. So he was already tearing up a whole bunch of used,  bed linens and tore me about a bunch of white strips. So I could use that for my arm bindings and my corset binding.

And then I made myself an entire new top. So I don’t like wearing bras with underwire. It hurts. I’ve actually gotten infections from them before. So I decided to teach myself how to make bullets bras. If you don’t know what that is. It’s like in the 1960s, when they used to have the boobs that look like the poke your eye out, that’s a bullet bra.

Liam: Yeah. Think the classic Madonna costume.

Desiree: Yeah. Like, like right there shaped like a bullet and  so I decided to make one of those as my regular bra, but I also made one for this costume. So it’s like a, a bra top attached to a shirt that has like electricity kind of spinning around it.  In a bullet bra type setting,

Liam: Well, and that must have been quite the learning process just in of itself, like learning how to make a bra.

Desiree: It took me an entire month just to make that, bra. I could probably do another thing on that, but I’m going to have to remake it because bras like everything else in my body, I changed shape and I need to make a new one all the time. I also wear that one for two years and it’s pretty dead, but yeah, I had to make four or five different muslins for that one and I’d already made the bras. So I basically just took the bra pattern and just made it in fabric and then stuffed it so that it would be nice and pointy. So it’s not all me under there. That’s a, that’s definitely just fake boob. And I made, I took a. A shirt that I liked that had stripes on it with a knit, which is obviously somebody that stretches.

And I made that my halter top to keep everything up. And then my husband had the sheets, like I said, and I found he didn’t need one. So I took one and I made it like an over jacket, kinda like Dr. Scrubs. And then I painted and cut up that.  So that it was like green. I like the idea of the green if on the bride of Frankenstein.

So it’s not just black and white. And I have pictures here of two different years where I wore this costume. Once I did it with like a pretty pasty white face. And another time I did it with more stitches, I think I like the, the more stitches look.

Liam: Yeah, I think that looks pretty good, but we definitely, if we’re talking about this costume, we got to talk about the wig.

Desiree: The wig is the part that kind of, besides the dress, which I had in my closet forever, the wig kind of inspired this costume, which is funny because I found it at a looney store for 12 bucks. So while I was at the looney store, I’m like, oh, that’s a pretty good looking wig, some wigs, like I bought my Elvira one at Superstore, I think or this value village.

It’s weird. Sometimes the places you find good wigs. And that one I really liked. And while I was at that looney store, they also had like the little mini led lights. And so I bought the led lights to put into the hair and I use CRIN, which is like this horse hair ribbon that you can use for different art projects.

People use it for ribbon ribbon on things, but you can also include it into like your skirts to make them fluff out. But they’re see-through and this one was colored like silver white. And I used that. To make the stripes up the side of the hair and then I can turn on. So I’ve got two different battery packs in that hair that I turn on for my led lights

LIam: So originally it was just a black wig. And then you added the stripes?

Desiree: Originally it was black with the white streak. It didn’t have the crin or the lights in it.

Liam: The lights. Yeah. Obviously you definitely want those.

Desiree: Yeah. And then there’s bangs here too, because initially, initially I kind of wanted to deal with it pin up style. So I had bangs, but now that I’m going to like wear my glasses, I’m not going to do that. I have these really cool glasses that are very elaborate.

So I’m not going to put the bangs on, but you can tell the difference between when I first wore it with the bangs and what I didn’t.

Liam: Yeah. Now that I’m looking at it.

Desiree: Yeah. And then of course my necklace, which is actually just a normal necklace for me, the one that’s full of eyeballs, because I just like eyeballs and I thought it went really well.

And I found this Frankenstein mug I’ve been using. I just thought it was great because it was actually a pretty easy costume for me. I mean, I already have stacker boots with a really big high platform. Boots. I already have a couple pairs of those. So I wear that and I throw it on as a Halloween costume.

If I just need to throw something on and run out the door, basically,

Liam: Considering how much effort you and your husband put into every Halloween costume that you make.  This would be one of the ones that is, requires the least amount of makeup and other additions, right? There’s no spirit gum and you’re not glue and anything to yourself for this one.

Desiree: No, they’re mostly just pieces to put on it and it’s a lot of pieces. So it’s fricking hot. I’ll wind up sitting outside and Kamloops and I’ll be perfectly fine in October without a jacket.  But it’s great. I do love it. The only change I’m doing this year, I’m slitting up the skirt more. So I have to kind of alter it out a bit.

Because I want to be able to zip it up all the way properly. And then I’m going to use that stripey corset that I already showed you guys that I had made instead underneath cause this black corset it’s too small for me. So hopefully it’ll all work out. As long as I wear suspenders, I am learning from last year’s Halloween costume.

If you have a big skirt wear fucking suspenders, otherwise your butt’s going to be exposed and not everybody wants that.

Liam: Yeah, you don’t want to be pulling up your skirt all night.

Desiree: All day. Yeah, no as well, it helps keep the skirt up. So you can just pick the whole skirt up if you have to pee because taking this kind of stuff off is a bad idea.

Liam: The stitch pattern is useful as well, because it requires less makeup on your face. And, uh, that’s one of the things that like I hate about costumes is when I have a mask or too much makeup on my face, it just it’s too distracting for me.

Desiree: And honestly, I even use like kids face paint sometimes because it’s the best stuff and it does cause I have super good ones.

Liam: Don’t have to go super fancy, right?

Desiree: No, like I have super allergies. So just like you, the sensitive skin and, well, though I have found that sometimes the black does a stain. I did it in like a, as a, a scarecrow costume and my whole chin was black and then it, yeah, it looked like.

Uh, five o’clock shadow for a bit. So be careful with the black.

Liam: Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

Desiree: No, but that’s okay. Whenever it’s me. I don’t care.

Liam: You also have to be careful what you a wipe it off with.

Desiree: I’m not really. I mean, it’s just, it’s literally watercolor. So you could even use a baby wipe.

Liam: Yeah. I was just thinking about how we’ve had multiple times. Cause my mom’s Halloween party, there are a lot of people that come to that party and she gives out a reward for people with the best costume. And so there have definitely been some times where people will put quite a lot of effort into their costume, but then the like they’re completely covered like head to toe in red paint and they wind up like staining their bathrooms.

Just taking a bath afterwards.

Desiree: Yeah, this kind of like hair dye, you just going to have to expect to, if you’re going to do it, your, your bathroom’s going to look like a murder scene. That’s just the way it is.

Liam: Yeah, well, especially cause they all drunk up at our party and then we will go into the bathroom and there’s like red hand prints on the walls. Like where the hell did this come from?

Desiree: Sometimes it’s dad with actual bloody footprints. I mean,

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: Is that decor or what did dad do this time? But I’m enjoying the idea of wearing that for moms this year. Something a little bit. For me, because I’ve got one market to go to. And so someone also from my old workplace wants me to teach them sewing.

I don’t know if I’m really a very good teacher, but I’m willing to give it a try once right so

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: Just to say that I did, and some of those Halloween costumes, like as much as mine are pretty elaborate Dori is the one that always beats me almost every time.

Liam: Yeah, he puts, he’s a very talented in his costume creation.

Desiree: Yes very, very detailed oriented. If he’s going to do it, it’s going to be, you know, I’m not sure when he’s doing this year, but we’ll see, he can always revive one of the mummies cause he’s done several.

Liam: Yeah, I’d definitely like to get pictures of some of this stuff that you guys have gone in as the, in the past, his anubis mask. I believe it was that he showed up with one year that he made entirely on his own. He fully constructed and it was quite impressive. Everybody was very impressed by that.

Desiree: Yeah. Wire construction foam, and then faux fur. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah. We definitely still have pictures. I don’t want to share them all because as that, if I do, I can’t do a podcast about those other costumes,

Liam: Well, it’s also I, for that, I would like to get Doron on to talk about it. That’s one of his completed projects I’d love to talk about.

Desiree: I will definitely ask him before.

Liam: At some point. Yeah.

Desiree: So I think that’s about it unless you want to talk about anything else.

Liam: Just, I guess what I’ve got planned coming up for the week in hobby.  I’ve got to finish those two miniatures. I don’t have D and D coming up this Sunday, so I’m not in a big rush to do it, but I do want to continue to expand my arsenal of winter terrain. So I might be making some ice banks, some like some snowbanks,  rocks, like barren rocks.

That’s kind of what I have in the air, in a tank for terrain making. And since it’s going to be a while before the next D and D session, I might actually do some work on the website since.

Desiree: I look forward to seeing the snow type stuff. Cause you haven’t really done that before

Not much. No.  And the, the stuff that I have been doing is a multipurpose for either spooky or snow. So the ice like drifts that I might potentially make would be more focused on being fully snow. We’ll see whether or not I actually get around to.

Desiree: And I’m going to try and work on my modeling, my Dracula. Pillow and my mummy pillow. And so much more words about categories concerning hobbits for my website, proud of myself for doing it. I, this website better be fricking killer by the time I’m done, man, I believe it

Liam: Um, I’m glad I, only have to put in as much effort as I deem worthy towards mine.

Desiree: What everybody keeps telling me is once it’s up, it’s easy because when you add new things, you’re only adding the individual new things. It’s not like I’m doing all a hundred again. So

Liam: Right.

Desiree: I believe in me.

Liam: Yeah, for me, my website near the front of it is a post that says this DM has too much time on his hands. And that’s the only time when I start working on the website.

Desiree: Well, you’ve got it now. So I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Liam: Yeah, I’ll probably upload some pictures. I got all those pictures of the beast woman army. I’ll probably be putting them into a gallery most likely. And,  maybe I’ll take some pictures of the minitures I haven’t posted yet on to the website, which for me would be solo quest.ca and the linked dump for the stuff that we’ve been talking about today will be available on the, where I’m putting all of the link dumps now for creative questions, which is.

Soloquest.ca/creativequestions, I believe.

Desiree: I believe so. Yep. And then it’ll definitely be on the YouTube.  So you can link it directly as well as you guys can keep track of any of the stuff I’ve been doing on New Nerd Novelties on Facebook or Instagram, as well as Tik TOK. So I do update Facebook the most.

Liam: Yes. And one of the things I think that we are going to be endeavoring to do in the near future is to start uploading those podcasts to other places besides YouTube.

Desiree: Yeah, well,  when I put it on my website, when it’s up, you can do it on yours as well. If you’d like

Liam: Right. Yeah. But also where most,  a lot of podcasts are found as well, such as like iTunes and SoundCloud and stuff like that.

Desiree: That’s true. Well, I’ll definitely take a look into that. So thank you everybody for listening, and I hope you have a great day.

Liam: Yes.

Desiree: This been Desiree Silver and Liam Hewlett of the brothers, sister, duo of creative questions.

Liam: I’ll be here next week.

Desiree: Have a, have a great time. Bye-bye.