Cheap scarabs or how to make swarms for less than $1

I have been laying low with my scarab building but I have seen so many sites that say that molding scarabs is both time consuming and expensive. Well I'm here to tell you its not, not by a long shot.


Alrighty where do I start... oh yeah this stuff

you've seen me pimp this product before and now I'm pimping it again. Instant mold, like a gamers gift from god. I make all of my molds with this stuff. It is amazing, you heat it up and wrap whatever you want to duplicate then after about 5 minutes it has hardened. Pry or cut out your original and it is ready to make more of them. Total time from "hey I should mold that" to "damn this copy looks great" is about 15 minutes. I got two packs of instant mould off the cool mini or not page about 9 months ago for $14. I can tell you with all seriousness this will pay for itself the first time you use it.
 quick google shows that it went up some but still cheap and effective

Alright so we have the molding material, now you have to get your hands on a scarab.

Hey here is one. Now go boil some water and put the instant mold in until it gets soft then stamp it down on the scarabs head.

This gives us a one part mold. True it doesn't get the detail of the underside of the scarab. So what? Its a model that is going to be hovering 3mm off the base even of you go through the trouble of pinning it. If you really want to go through the trouble of making the 2 part mold you can but that is just adding time and effort for little gain in my opinion.

Now to the stuff you make your scarabs out of. I love the hardware isle at wal-mart

Loctite repair putty. Its cheap, sets quickly and holds details excellent when it is shoved forcefully into molds. You get 2 oz. for around $3.50. Sets in 1 minute, de-moldable in 4 totally cured in 1 hour.

Next we come to the bases

Again from the hardware isle. $4 gets you 24 1 1/2 inch felt furniture pads. You can get 1 inchers available in a 48 pack for the same price.  They are even sticky on one side so you can add bits of terrain and sand to base your scarabs super easily and again quick.

On my felt pads I went for a cork rock theme throughout the army. My cost was 5 cork coasters for $3 from hobby lobby. They are enough to do 48 of these bases and so far have done 48 1 inchers and I still have 1 coaster left. The sand was easy, I live in Florida so I went out back with a cup.

So here is the assembled scarabs on their spiffy faux stone base. I went for 6 on the bases to give t more of a swarm feel. 

A primer coat, some bolt gun metal a grey dry brush and red/pink dots for the eyes (did I mention that this is for my girlfriends army) and they are done.

Total cost from scratch
Instant mold $10
Loctite $3.50
Furniture pads $4
cork coasters $3

$20.50
cost per scarab swarm base $0.85416666

Total time investment, 2 hours to make the molds (I made 12 molds at once) and an evening sitting in front of the television making scarabs.

This gives you enough material to do
144 scarabs
24 bases
basing material for almost your entire army
instant mold for years of mold making happiness
The satisfaction that you are now a DIY gamer


Some words of advise if you are going to try this. While you are waiting on one batch to come out of the molds take the time to rim flash off of the batch that came out previously. This stuff dries hard and it will be next to impossible to get clean smooth cuts after it fully cures. And if you want to put them on flying stands like I did, shove the wire in while they are still soft in the mold. Makes life easier to not have to drag out the pin vice for every one.

Tune in next time on DIY corner when I show you how I made a 1500 pt nurgle chaos daemon army for less than $25.