Finished our Zuzzy Mats

We finally finished our Zuzzy mats, and just in time for the tournament this weekend too! People are going to love hiding in the woods, and running through the broken city streets from 40k zombies (I love zombies)!

I picked up where I left off earlier this week, ink washing the different textures of my mat in two different shades of green. This is the step that took the longest. Luckily, it is followed by the easiest step- drybrushing. Let the ink sit for a couple hours and completely dry, this is extremely important because if you get impatient and don’t wait long enough you will mess up your drybrushing. (Its hard to DRY brush on a mat that is wet….)

Anyway, then I took a two inch paint brush from the hardware store and grabbed another of my Citadel paints – Elysian Green. I used that to highlight all the high spots over the entire mat. This helped to give it a little more depth and also tie the two shades together a little bit to provide some unity.

After I finished all the drybrushing (which actually didn’t take long at all), Teddy used a can of spray sealant and sprayed a thin coat over the mat just for added protection to my paint job. The Zuzzy mat website claims that sealing is unnecessary, and I believe them. However, with the amount of play our mats get on a daily basis, a little extra protection never hurts!

We let that set overnight and then used some carpet tape to secure the mat permanently to our table. We weren’t originally planning to do that, but the edges were starting to curl up a little bit and we didn’t want that. And, that’s it! The mat is all ready to play on, and so is the city map actually.

After Teddy finished ink washing his mat, he used Citadel Dawnstone and the same technique to drybrush over the black and give some added dimension and age to the asphalt.

Here are both the mats covered in terrain and ready to play!

**Originally posted 11-1-2013

Check out our Zuzzy Mats!

We recently received our new Zuzzy mats in the mail. We ordered them months ago and they took a long time to come but I think it was worth the wait because even unpainted they look great! Teddy and I each picked one out and those are our projects this week.

I have spent the past two days painting and I’m guessing I still have another day to go on this bad boy, but I will update our progress as we get closer to finishing. This is “The Moorlands” Zuzzy mat which I am painting to look like a forest floor. The first thing I did was grab my citadel paints (no primer necessary) and a large drybrush. Zuzzy says you can use any acrylic paints but I prefer Citadel, and I had plenty on hand.

The Zuzzy mat is made out of latex so I was a little skeptical about how well the paint was going to adhere but I used the test swatch they gave me and tried to rub my sample colors off and they stuck tight. The mat was still really flexible and not a single bit of paint flaked off. So, I began painting the 4′ by 6′ mat we have on one of our gaming tables in the store. My entire base layer is Loren Forest. In the picture above you can see where I started painting the different splotches. There are two different textures on the mat which are hard to see in the photo but the spaces that are already green are more of a grassy looking area while the parts that are still gray I am going to make look more bare with rocks and dirt.

I finished painting the entire mat Loren Forest but you can see how just the textures make the paint look different shades before I even started the ink washing process.

All together it took me about 4 hours and 7 paint pots to get the amount of coverage I wanted over the entire mat. I was really happy with the results, and after I let that dry, I started adding the ink wash. We really wanted to differentiate the two textures so Teddy and I agreed on a nice deep green for the lush grassy patches and a brownish green for the flatter spots.

Again I went to my trusty Citadel paint line and grabbed Biel-Tan Green and Athonian Camoshade. As I started with the green I thought it might be a little too dark, so I started trying to spread the ink a little further. This was rather difficult as there are sooooo many cracks and crevices for it to get into, but I was able to manage and as it dried the color toned down a bit.

I am about halfway done with the wash and so far I am really liking it. Once I finish that up, I can move on to dry brushing!

I can’t forget to mention, Teddy has been very busy too. He picked out “The Wounded City” Zuzzy mat and has been working on it pretty quickly (although his is far less work than mine, just sayin’). This mat is a huge part of Teddy’s city fight themed table. Parts of the mat have brick showing through the asphalt. He used an old Citadel Foundation called Mechrite Red, which of course, they don’t make anymore. Sorry. Then he started washing the entire mat in Nuln Oil, which we used to black wash pretty much every piece of terrain on our tables, no joke. Anyway, here are some photos of his progress and I will post an update of our finished tables very soon.

**Originally posted 10-28-2013

Starting Over

Hey everyone! 
I have been having TONS of problems with my other blog, so I apologize for not posting anything in awhile. 
Anyway, after all that I decided to just start a new blog and see if I can transfer my other posts over to the new location. 

Thanks for being patient!