Hey Jungle Painters,

you might think: Woot? 
Why is there another tutorial beside Tutorial Voting?

Well, easy to explain.
During the last weekend Massive Voodoo's page views hit a magic mark:
Six Million pageviews on the blog since the start have been breached and your miniature painting jungle did not yet celebrate it's 5th birthday (September will be the month to do so). That means an average of over a million pageviews a year for the jungle. Wow!

The MV-Team thought this is a moment to celebrate with you, our readers. To say thanks that you are reading in the jungle blog we bring you some surprises this week beside the regular jungle content.

Let's start with the following article about how you can create candles for your basing, written by Roman. Candles are good to celebrate something, eh? Let's jump into Roman's brain now.


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Last week
 we had the private coaching with Matthias who did choose to build up a dungeon display base. Raffa and Roman did build a base too and guided Matthias through his own. During the progress of all three bases we thought: There is no proper fantasy dungeon without ... right, candles.

Let me explain to you an easy way on how you can create your own candles for your scenery.


You need the following material:

- Putty (I used BeesPutty Plastic)
- a wooden plinth to work on or some cork
- a hobby knife
- a toothpick
- maybe a sculpting tool of your choice
- an oven
- thin wire
- superglue

Let's start right away. Very often candles you can buy for basing are way too big in scale to fit properly to an 28mm or 32mm scene. So my first task was to take some of the BeesPutty and roll sausages, thick and thin ones. As the BeesPutty only hardens via baking in the oven I rather do more than less of those "candle sausages" right now:

Now cut parts you want to use as candles from these putty-sausages:

 If you do it right with the cutting the putty pieces might already stick together while you cut them, if not you have single candles, but nevermind you can bring them all together later on if you choose to do so:

 Next put some of the putty to the ground of your working plinth you work on. Why? Simple answer: If you don't the candles won't have a good grip on the wood or cork and will not stand vertical. Now place your candle sticks to the putty areas with the use of the blade or the toothpick. Form groups and little candle families. Take the toothpick or your sculpting tool of choice to create the typicall look of candles. Melted wax. You can take whatever time is needed to form and sculpt the candles you like to have.Well, I tried, but I am not perfect here. Nevermind.


Important while placing them is that you connect your sticks to the putty on the ground by using a toothpick or they will break not have a good chance to stand like you wish them to. On the following photo you can see the ones not smoothen marked with a black arrow:


When you are happy with your results it is time to put them in the oven. BeesPutty bakes at 120° for about 20 minutes. Afterwards carefully cut them off the ground and place them as you like on your base with superglue. A little candy-family there, or here and some single ones here and there. Sorry for the messy base WIP, it is a base-WIP.



One important thing is still missing: The candlewick. By using thin wire, which was cut in small pieces those have been created and placed with superglue. Carefully using the tip of a toothpick to bring on a small amount of glue where it was needed, turning the toothpick around, using the other tip and a little bit of spit on it to pick up the candlewick. Then put it where you want it. Don't mix up your toothpick's tips, you might fast regret it if the toothpick is superglued to your tongue.


On Matthias' base, which was build for his WIP-Dark-Elve-Sorceres you can spot the candles in a little corner of the dungeon. They occour as a small detail as they are in the right scale. Keep that in mind to work in the right scales if you add such small details. Sure, there are also bigger candles like those we created here, you have to make your thoughts on your own about scales and candle sizes.


I won't tell you which colour Matthias or I will paint his/my candles as this is also something you have to decide on your own.

Hope you enjoyed the article!
Keep on happy painting and light a candle sometimes!

Best Wishes
Roman