Despite my best effort and a profuse amount of foam noodle packaging, the minis arrived in Germany quite broken. I'm not sure what is going on or if it is pure coincidence but the last 3 or 4 parcels I've sent to Germany have ended up looking like they've been delivered via dozen-mile drop kicks with the packaging being absolutely battered. This after going with DHL (as requested by the client) which cost £43!!!!
I think I charged like £15 for postage, I agreed to send by DHL before I'd got a quote, I was not expecting that big a difference. I probably should have stuck with Royal Mail which was within budget but I felt that I probably shouldn't argue given the delays on the order.
Anyway, long story short, my client loved the minis, promptly fixed them and stuck them onto some square bases and they can now be seen terrorising the Old World battlefields in Germany. They very kindly send me some photos of the finished minis:
The bases do add a lot, and I think I achieved the 'dothraki' feel that they were after with the variety of wild horse patterns and different skin tones. The fees have now cleared through Fiverr's 14 day clearance period (I thought we were in a digital age and instant money transfers etc, but hey ho.
Whilst waiting to hear back from Client no 3, I pressed on with some more Aeldari running up a tester model for my rangers unit and also working on a war-walker.
I accidentally used ratling grime on the ranger's weapons instead of the black templar I usually use, it was a happy accident in the end, I really like it and am going to switch to this colour for all the weapons. The cammo cloak pattern is something I just tried out and I think it's actually pretty cool, the dots kind of finished it off nicely because the triangles on their own weren't quite looking as good as I thought they would, I stuck with it though and am glad that I did.
And at this point Client number 3 said they were happy to wait and so we are game on again. This one, if you'll remember, is a huge $1,000 Slaves to Darkness army for AoS. I think I'm going to start with some warriors just to whet my whistle.
Time for a bit of Administration. I'm going to ditch my old scores on the doors routine and switch to what is easily trackable on Fiverr which means reporting in dollars so I only have to do a conversion on my shipping costs. Now that I have a better handle on fees as well, this will help things a lot.
Cleared transactions:
Commission #1
Value: $40
Fees: -$8
Shipping: -$£4.98
Gross Profit: $27.02
Commission #2
Value: $237
Material: -$84.12 (I ordered the minis, but lost out as I didn't account for Fiverr's 20%. Ouch!)
Fees: -$47.40
Shipping: -$53.20
Gross Profit: $52.28
Total Income: $277
Total Outgoings:-$197.70
Gross Profit to date: $79.30
Pending Transactions:
Commission #3
value: $1,250
Fees: -$250
Customs charge: -$49.49 (Doh!)
Shipping: -$150 (estimated)
Potential Gross Profit: $800.51
In The Coffers:
$29.81 (about £24GBP)
Ok, so on the business front, it's not looking particularly successful yet, however, there were a couple of silly school-boy errors that have impacted this on top of the fact I haven't been as productive as I would have liked. Ironically, had I charged full RRP for the minis on order #2, I wouldn't have felt that cost, but because I could order at goblin Gaming and get my client 20% off, that's what I did. This essentially cost me about $15, then the shipping oversight which cost me $35 and the customs charge another $50 so all in all I should have another $100 in the coffers. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't suddenly make it a resounding success but it certainly looks better than the current tally, which is lagging horrifically behind my hobby spend!
Speaking of which.....
Since this is supposed to be about a self-funding hobby, I suppose I should include my hobby spend from when this started. Buckle your seatbelt folks, this isn't going to be pretty!
I purchased 99% of an Aeldari Army, pretty much all of which was paid for by offloading some of my pile of shame on eBay, amongst which was a Mordheim Empire in Flames book which was apparently quite rare and netted me a tidy sum. Anyway, I'm not counting anything I bought with that money as hobby spend, it's more of a "rebalancing of the grey shame".
What I did fork out for was the awesome looking Guards of Traitors Toll bundle set from Grey for Now games at £111 including shipping.
I also purchased 120 clear plastic bases to put the minis on, and picked up a few war-games Atlantic single spurs for kit bash purposes. And seeing as I was on Wayland, I bought an Autarch and some warlocks too. Another £66.15 there.
I bought my ticket to Tribemeet 2025 (Yes, the committee pay too, no we don't make any profit; in fact we've made a habit of covering the losses between us!). If you haven't got yours yet, grab one now, September is around the corner and if you've never been, come along, it's awesome. If you've been before, you know how awesome it is, get your ticket now!! £45.
I picked up a set of Artify dry brushes off Amazon after Juan Hidalgo had recommended them. They are a cool little box set. They are really good! I do have an Artis Opus version of these and I can say that the quality of the dry brushing is just as good. Bear in mind the Artis Opus brushes are £15 plus each and this set of 5 cost £30. Now, what I will say is that my Artis Opus dry brush has had a lot heavier use than the Artify ones, but you wouldn't tell that from the condition of the bristles, I have no doubt the Artis Opus brushes will outlast the Artify ones, but given you can almost buy 3 sets of the Aritfy for the equivalent of the AO, I think I'll be sticking with Artify for the time things (Sorry AO, I am a big fan, honest!). Long way of saying I spent £30 on paint brushes!
In the process of doing the sky blue-jade colour transition on my Aeldari, I managed to 'over clean' my airbrush and damage the seal that stops paint back feeding into the trigger mechanism, so I purchased a new seal kit and some monument hobbies glaze/wash medium. I haven't actually tried this yet or seen any reviews, but I will be experimenting with it soon. Take another £27.48 of my money!
Oh, and I bought a Ver.Ka MG Gundam in a recent trip to Nottingham and I had a look in Element Games which, by the way, is not a patch on the Stockport store despite having Louise Sugden's infamous 'Crayon Eaters' space marine she entered into Golden Daemon and won a badge. Said Gundam cost me £80.
Finally, I picked up about £40 of random hoppy crap on Temu. Single edged nippers, some led street lights for my Neo-tokyo project, cork bark chunks, tufts (you can't have too many tufts), more paintbrushes and other bits that I won't remember until they arrive. Amazing how quick your Temu basket ramps up when it's full of £2.50 and £3 bits of tat.
So yeah, hobby spend is totalling £399.63. Yikes. That's massive compared to my current cash pot of £27, but I am confident I will break even once I get commission #3 done. Watch this space!
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