Blog Giveaway Leven Miniatures

GEN10 Stone Watermill

Mick at Leven Miniatures was very quick to support this giveaway and rather generous with the offer of £20 worth of free buildings to the lucky followers that have their names drawn from the hat. I will stand the postage upto £5 per winner, if it's above that you will need to pay the extra, so if you take the opportunity to buy more buildings than your £10 then some of the postage if not all will fall to me so have some fun with this.  Leven produce a wealth of 6mm buildings spanning lots periods from Viking to Modern Day with lots between. One of the things I like so much about Leven is that the range is mushrooming with new products coming out all the time.

One of my favourite Leven buildings is this watermill, at just £2.00 each it's fantastic value and whilst it should be stone can be painted up as brick as I have done here. The level of detail is excellent with the detail crisp and deep allowing you to mix dry brushing and washes to great effect. It's worth nipping over to the site to check out the gallery were some other painters have done these buildings more justice than I have. 

The following is a brief history of Leven Miniatures and a bit of what makes Mick tick.

Back in the 1970's I spent much of my spare time with friends working on battle orders for various active war games I was involved with, both as referee and player.

It was during this period that we decided to expand our small 3' x 3' board to an 8' x 8' board consisting of interchangeable 2' x 2' panels. The board layout was improved from a flat board painted green to contoured boards with roads, rivers, hillsides and even a port area. The buildings at this time were simply cardboard squares cut out and placed on the board to denote the location, and the type of building was simply written on the card. After a time we progressed to painted wooden blocks.

Eventually, I found a supplier of resin buildings at 6mm scale and purchased a few. This was all very well, but on an 8 foot square board, we found we needed dozens of buildings to make the diorama look believable, and the shop-bought models were way more than we could afford. I improved on the wooden blocks to make them look more realistic, but I was still not satisfied with their appearance, and I decided that I would attempt to remake the buildings along the lines of the one's we had bought, so using cardboard to face the wooden blocks I cut out the doors and windows etc. Finally, once I had improved my models I progressed to making rubber moulds and resin casts.

When I left the area, I packed up all my war-gaming stuff, and it stayed in my loft for years. By that time, computers were providing excellent wargame simulations, so that was the route I took.

When I decided to clear out my entire collection in 2011, I put them all on eBay. Both the vehicles (over 4,000 of them), and the buildings went very well, and I realised that there was still a market for them. I trawled the internet for what was available and found that availability in 6mm scale was still relatively limited, so I made a couple of new buildings of my own to test the market. After that, and being RAF biased, I decided to produce a range of airfield & military buildings, and put these out to see what happened, and basically, I'm still doing it.

MED01 £2.00

From the medieval range is this lovely Post Windmill, the range comprises of eight items at present including a new addition.

NOR02 £2.00

Above is a Normandy town house, part of a new range that has 4 different two or three story houses helping you build up a nice village for your Normandy battles.

FAR02 £2.00

A really nice stables that I have ordered for myself just this weekend gone, the buildings are a mix of old and modern styles so it's possible to mix and match.

GEN13 £2.00

OK I am betting you did not expect a lighthouse did you? well it's actually one of two available! So it should not come as a surprise that he also has a Pit Head and winding house as well. Don't beleive me? It's item IND20 in the industrial section.

GEN04 £3.00

I can't look at the cinema without seeing streams of 6mm zombies pouring out, do I need help? No just someone to supply me with the zombies.

MIL13b £3.00

The military section runs to 28 buildings though mostly for airfields which should be no surprise given the nature of how this business has taken off (pun intended). 

So the important bit if you want to be in it to win it. It's almost as simple as leaving a comment below and you get put in the hat, see below for the small print but that's the gist of it.

1. You must be a follower.

2. If you run a blog please also post about it on your blog with a link to the giveaway.

3. You have till I get up on Monday 1st of April when I will draw the lucky winners.

4. Entry in this giveaway does not stop you entering others.

5. If you win one giveaway you are still able to win any of the others so enter as many as you wish, see 6. though.

6. Please only enter draws that you will actually want, in the case of suppliers they are giving away their products and I would hate it to go to someone who will not paint these up and use them.

7. Even if you don't win but go on to order from Leven Miniatures would you please mention your interest was increased by the giveaway, I want Mick to know if he gained extra sales from his support and it will help with a future article I wish to write.

So a whole week to get commenting and and worked up about all the giveaways coming, pop back tomorrow for giveaway 2.