Here are your art supplies :-)

   exacto knife - be careful with this :-)

   extra exacto blades - this is a cool little box, spring loaded section pushes new blades up where you drag them out, and notice the little slot to the left - you put your old useless blades in there for safe disposal (for even dull exacto blades tend to cut through garbage bags and such!)

  you will need to go to walmart and get a sharpening stone, sharpening your exacto blades (whichever one is in your knife at the time) will make it last ten to twenty times longer, eventually though you'll notice the tip has broken off, and it just doesn't cut the way it used to - means it's time for a new blade :-) or when you sit down to make a special mini, that can be a fine time to retire an older blade and whip out a new shiny blade :-)

   sprue cutters - you used a pair like them during your last visit, use these to snip the parts off of the sprues, then slice off major remnants with the hobby knife, then sand with the fine side of the emry board (which is your next item :-)

    emry boards x2  one side is really rough, the other fine grain, use the rough when you seriously want to remove plastic - the fine when you want to make something smooth.  bonus - remember that dragging your exacto knife backwards across plastic is another great way to get a very smooth finish as well!

  superglue - fairly self explanatory, a small drop - hold together for a 15 count and you should be good. But sometimes superglue gets wierd and doesn't want to cure (but we have the answer for that in just a moment!),  nailpolish remover with acetone (available like everywhere) will remove superglue  from your fingers (soak a cotton ball in the NPR and rub your fingers gently till it all comes off, it might take a few minutes but it will work :-) 

  Flashtac superglue accelerant - available at hobby lobby, for anything that you want to glue together (and it's giving you grief) this is your answer - place parts A and B together (with their glue in place) then spritz once, maybe twice with this - in two or three seconds the superglue has set. I hear you saying it should set almost that fast anyway but in truth it often takes up to 20seconds because we mortals often dribble too much superglue out for our own good :-)   Flashtac is a great tool with many applications - one of the best is when it's hard to hold two pieces in just the perfect pose, with flashtac all you need to do is figure out how to hold it with one hand for just long enough to squirt the flashtac! (this can lead to some dramatic moments I promise!) but the results are worth it :-)   on your next visit I'll show you some cool tricks to do with flashtac (you'll be miles ahead of many gamers in your town!) :-)

  paints - I've got you most of the basics for your army - you'll find you will need more though :-)

       these are water based, so go get a glass of water :-)
       shake your paint well, then open (the tops can be a pain to open, I've found a huge trusty pair of pliers to help me when mine get uppity!). 

     To conserve your paint -dip your brush in deeply and then put the paint onto one of the basins in your paint tray (the big white thing with little bowl like depressions), do this a couple of times and whammo you have all the paint you'll need for a while (you'll be painting from your paint tray - go close your paint bottle now). I often put my cup of water in the big round area in the middle of the paint tray (but that's just me). The paint right now is straight from the bottle - this is as thick as it will ever get (and that's PLENTY thick I promise!), to make it a little less thick dip your brush in your water - then bo right back to the paint tray (the brush just carried a bunch of water to your paint) then stir your brush around and whammo your paint it now "thinned" :-)   Thick paint is good for covering large areas, thin watery paint is good for when you want to paint a tiny detail, get your smallest brush, thin your paint - dip the very very tip in the paint then proceed immediately to apply your paint with your rock steady hand. With practice you'll find the perfect consistency to aim for.

    by the way - you'll need to clean your brushes in water like every 15 minutes (this paint thickens on your brush and reduces it's ability to serve you well), but by cleaning your brush (swish around in water and then dry off in a kleanex) everything stays happy :-) 

   if you don't feel water if cleaning your brushes as well as you'd like you can swish them around in nailpolish remover and whammo again - new paintrush (lot's of "whammos" in this hobby) :-)

  Also - GW paints do best when thoroughly mixed, so if you're painting with one clor for a long time, and things begin to get funky (and your brush is clean) close your bottle, shake well, and add new paint to your paint tray.

    Your colors.

   you've got chaos black for your armor

   skull white - shoulder pads, Scott tells me you'll do better with your pure white shoulder pads if you go to walmart and get a cheap bottle of  white craft paint (dollar bottle of white acrylic), Scott says it's so incredibly thick it goes on white instantly (the GW white takes several thinned coats).

   dwarf flesh - this is a tan flesh color - paint this on the faces of whoever doesn't have a helmet (I make most of mine wear helmets, leaders sometimes go without though), after the paint is dry (like 30minutes to an hour) you can hit it with a fleshwash. fleshwash will be scary the first few times, but trust me - it'll be okay. paint a big blob of fleshwash (I mean a BIG blob!) on his face and walk away, in a few minutes you'll see it dribbled down into the cracks and everything is mostly okay :-) if it's too dark for your liking you can drybrush a little flesh color over the highlights and he'll be fine :-)  I'll cover drybrushing in a moment :-)

  bleached bone - this is for those skulls on your armor, I like the effect when i paint them with bleached bone, then (once dry) I hit them with a light wash of fleshwash) the ink goes into the sockets and teeth which brings out the details :-)

  a "dark wash" is just using straight ink (sometimes lots of straight ink!) a "light wash" means you used less ink OR you thinned the ink with a little water (same way you thin the paint), load a brush with ink - put it in your paint tray, load your brush with water - then back into the ink in your paint tray and whammo, thinned ink :-) thinned ink is the way to go if you want a lightly washed look, using just a little ink takes practice to do well as it tends to dry quickly (like as you're painting it!) :-)  and note - flashback to where I mentioned painting fine details - see I said use thinned paint for little stuff? thinned paint flows better, needed when you do small stuff and are using only the very very very tip of your brush :-)

chainmail silver - paint this on your weapons - then give a light black wash (sorry - forgot to get you black ink!) so you have to find the nearest gamestore to you (GW has several stores in Austin I think)
 

  drybrushing: is a simple trick which you'll come to love, but it requires a special brush. Pick one of your brushes to be your drybrush (for once you drybrush with it it will never quite be the same again! :-)

brybrushing goes like this (easiest example I can think of) flash back to AD&D and think of a mini with chainmail - remember (because you've done this before) you paint the chainmail black, then lightly go over it with a little silver and whammo the brush only hits the highest points so suddenly what was once all black now looks like chainmail :-)

simple in concept, easy to do, but I'll share some insights with you since you're my friend and all :-)
first - right at the beginning select a brush (one with long bristles) and get a pair of scissors (scared now?) :-)  we're going to cut that lovely brush so that the bristles are onlyone quarter inch long - this is now your drybrush brush - don't use any other brushes for drybrushing (it will ruin them - you'll see why in a second!). Here's what you do with the drybrush:

 you get a paper towel and fold it over, place it near you - get your drybrush and dip it directly in your paint jar - then go straight to the paper towel (you doubled it over so the paint won't soak through) now, rub your brush all around so than ALMOST ALL the paint on it is now on the paper towel, THEN (big part here) I want you to bonk your paintbrush straight down on the paper towel (I'm assuming there's a hard surface under it) cuz I want those bristles to be splayed out in all directions, like opening all the fingers on your hand as wide as you can that's how I want that brush tip to look (see why we don't do this to all your brushes?) :-)  anywho, now that you've done this (your brush will likely be like this forever now - and that's fine) make sure there's still a LITTLE bit of paint on it and now go LIGHTLY buff the surface of your model with your brush - the result will be that a LITTLE of your paint sticks to the highest parts of whatever you're painting.  Uses are: if you have a semi dark silver gun, you can drybrush bright silver onto it and suddenly the highlights will gleam silvery   or you've painted a fellow with a blue robe, you hit him with a light blue drybrushing and suddenly the highlights are more visible (the mini will appear more striking somehow).  Ahh - one of the big ones - FACES - faces give me grief, as we discussed before you can paint them with flesh color, then ink them (this is usually enough for me) but some might like to hit it after that with a light flesh drybrushing to bring out the highlights (and the effect can be really cool!). There is no right or wrong, there is only what you like so have fun :-)

go here to see hundreds (if not over a thousand) pics of mostly well painted minis (some are simply spectacular!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/events.htm

~ Blood Angel Brother Edward