Sand quest and the price of Plastruct...

So, my ongoing quest to get some more of the sand that I use for basing my miniatures continues. To cut a long story short, I was running out, so emailed the guy I got the last batch from to order some more. After various setbacks, sand eventually turns up, but is much finer than the previous batch (it's like curly-wurlies, I'm sure they were bigger when I was younger...) - like, so fine that if you get it into contact with glue it will just dissolve. I send some emails, wait a week, send some more emails, and wait another week, which brings us to today.

Fed up of not being able to base the halo minis I converted in previous posts, I decided to head into town, since our local art shop stocks some model railway supplies. On arriving though, there's plenty of coloured flocks and whatnot, but no sand. They have, however, started stocking Games Workshop stuff, even though there's a GW not five minutes down the road... Swallowing my pride, I bought some overpriced GW sand. It's a little finer than what I usually use, but it should be workable. Admittedly, this is the much abridged version of events, as I spent a ridiculous amount of time wandering around the shop (it seems they don't stock milliput any more, despite my looking on every shelf, sometimes twice), and even when I found the GW stand, the sand was hiding behind some snow flock, so I almost didn't find it...

Whilst wandering around, I had a browse of their Plastruct products - there's a nice selection of I-beams and whatnot that look like they'd be useful for basing, and prettying up areas of urban rubble. Unfortunately, nothing was priced, and I ended up paying £1.38 for 15" of 1/16" tiny plastic girder... Ah well, live and learn I guess, but it is kinda cool...