Over the weekend of May 25 and 26, 2024, the Illawarra Plastic Modellers Association (IPMA) held their annual scale model competition at the Illawarra Sports Centre in Berkely, a suburb of Wollongong, New South Wales.  We have been attending this show for a number of years now, and once again, we made the 10 hour drive to attend the show both as a trader and an entrant into the competition.  We took a selection of our paints and products to sell with our long time retailer, Rob Starkey of Star Hobbies, also attending with our entire range, along with new retailer Andrew Fulton of Fulbore Models who had a small selection of our range also. So between the three of us, the entire SMS range was available to purchase across the two days of the show.  ABOVE : Star Hobbies stand with our paints on show Whilst the entry numbers...

The guys at Diecast Distributors Australia (DDA) recently sent us a sample of the new 1/24 scale XY Ford Falcon to build for promo purposes, so let's take a first look at what's in the box!  The boxart is in the same style as the first DDA kits releases (the HQ & HJ Holdens), with the built kit up front and centre with a reflection underneath it of a painted version.  The sides also feature the same styling of the wire frame design.  And the underside features the sprue layouts again also, a handy way to quickly check the kit contents without having to open the box.  And finally, the display box returns with some new internal artwork Looking at the main body, it is a well molded piece, with no flash, no seams and a flawless surface which will mean that our Auto Colours will be able to go...

Customising 1:64 scale model cars can be a quick, fun project to do. You can go full on and make modifications like adding 3d printed wheels for example, or you can just go with a simple repaint to give the car a new lease of life.  In this tutorial, I'll show how easy it is to do a quick repaint of a 1:64 car that will only take you an hour to complete at most, this time using a Zuru Metal Machines car that I purchased from our local KMart store for a couple of dollars.  First thing is to remove the car from the package (obviously!).  It then needs to be disassembled by removing the chassis from underneath. To get these apart, I drilled out the mounting holes from underneath with my cordless drill. With those drilled out, the chassis could be removed and then the rest of the...

At the recent ScaleACT show back in November 2023, I caught up with David Forsyth of new local model company, Hobartville Hobbies.  David has been creating some fantastic 3d prints of some very niche, but much sought after aircraft kits such as the RAAF Fairey IIID.  At the show, David set up a trade table with some of his kits for sale along with some painted builds of his products, all painted in our Premium Acrylic Lacquers.  Also on display were some new aftermarket parts :  The Hobartville Hobbies kits look fantastic and are extremely well designed and detailed. The instruction manuals are all very clear and concise, with the notable addition of our colours being included in the colour call outs which makes life a lot easier for modellers when it comes time to choose the right colours for the model.  I've spoken to David a few times over...