Looking Fabulous Darling.


On tuesday I hinted at a solution for rivets. Read on to see how.
Rivets have been an issue for me for some time, they are an essential way to make a model look really finished and something I really want to solve without having to sit punching holes in card for hours on end.

In the past I've tried blobs of glue, punched card, DIY embossing among many other attempts, after a discussion with Dave he mentioned that you can get bags of resin rivets.
Digging around online, I failed to find bags of rivets but I did find these decal sheets that will produce excellent results such as this example from their website
However at $17.95 per sheet i think they are a little on the expencive size when considering the amount needed.

Continuing my search for solutions lead me to a forum suggesting using toy dolls eyes, with sized down to a couple of mm it seemed like a great plan.
Ebay was then my next stop and while I didn't find exactly what I wanted I was amused by these. 
3mm googly eyes were just too tempting to pass up, I was concerned (rightly so as it turned out) that they would be too tall to look good as rivets but the idea of a chaos shrine (or beast) covered in googly eyes was just to cool to be worried by the 99p price tag. 
However having added the eyes to my basket I decide to check out the seller's other items, and Bingo I found something far more promising.


2mm diameter self adhesive rhinestones. not only did they seem the right shape and size for good rivets but adding shiny stones  after painting? So cool for many models.

Soon as they arrived I grabbed a pair of tweezers and got to work. While unpainted they didn't quite look right as rivets because of the colours, but they will definitely look great as gemstones and I was confident that painted up they would be perfect.

My only slight issue is that the self adhesive allows some flex in the position as it is a blob of soft, clear, sticky stuff and quick solution is a drop of runny superglue. Still the self adhesive nature makes placing the stones really easy and you can just go round with glue after they are all nicely in place.
Some people may also think they are a little too pronounced, a matter of taste in my opinion as it helps bring out the industrial feel and will really take weathering effects nicely when painted.   

The pipe terrain used just under 100 leaving plenty for the next project and now painted I think they look great.
So great in fact I've started doing some more detail work on a piece of walkway.
At some point I will be ordering a load more and may one day get round to using those googly eyes for something. But what do you think?


Comments

  1. Very interesting idea. That seems significantly less time consuming then other methods of making rivet heads!

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    Replies
    1. it was so quick to do and and £1.50 for 300 very cheep.

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