I have been seeing a lot of videos on TikTok where people are taking items for dollar stores and converting them into terrain, miniatures, or other items to use in wargaming or roleplaying games. There is a Dollar Tree near my house, so I thought I would give it a try.

Now in comparison to some of the things I have been seeing elsewhere, my Dollar Tree was a little disappointing. I did buy some things, and considered others, but passed on them until these first projects were done. Here is my haul, clocking in at just a little over $14.

So there is one wooden hexagonal tray and Handy Shammy that I will think about converting into a dice tray, a cleaning towel and paint scraping that will go right to work with my 3D printer, a wood rectangular panel thing that I’m not sure how I will use but I think something will come to me, and two…figurines? They are little busts of MCU Avengers characters, which I’ve seen converted into statuary elsewhere, and will do the same here.

Here are the two pieces ($1.25 each). For scale purposes, the pieces are about three inches in height.

The first thing I did was bust out the handheld Dremel tool and sand down the Avengers logo and Captain America’s raised star on his chest and back, and the A on his mask. Then I sanded both pieces with a sanding block/sponge to roughen the surface up to take paint better and give it some texture.

Then I spray painted both of the busts with Krylon Matte Black primer. When this was done, the two pieces looked good and in Cap’s case, not quite so identifiable.

Then I painted both first with a heavy drybrush of DecoArt Americana Zinc craft paint, then Delta Ceramcoat Deep Taupe, and finally a highlight of Delta Ceramcoat Cableknit Grey. Once it had dried, I washed them with a mix of brown and green ink to give them a more organic, slimy look. Finally I coated them with a matte spray varnish, and they were good to go!

I considered adding green flocking here and there to represent moss, but decided against it for the time being. I may revisit that later. Here’s the final product.

Ironically, the highlighting and ink wash ended up drawing out the faint bits of Captain America’s costume not so evident when just sanded and primed, but there you go. This was a quick, cheap, and easy terrain project that made two statues that could be used in a lot of ways.

As always, comments welcome!