Supplies

Just want to know were all the people get there building stock from?

I hunt through dollar stores and hobby shops also craft stores, but I am finding balsa wood is getting more expensive and cheap bags are hard to find.

I also am having a hard time finding foam core (other than at the evil empire of wallmart) any ideas.

also list any store worth checking out please.

I live in Canada. thanks for your time.

I'm a Michael's Guy myself; their jewelry section has all sorts of cool & useful stuff. For the foam core, Office Depot & Staples are a good source at reasonable prices. I'm not sure if any of these are in Canada; my days living in Montreal are a long time gone.

There are Micheal Stores here in Canada. Edmonton has at least two. I find my fomecard at the dollar store. As for the wooden sticks...they are hard to find for cheap prices. I got my latest batch from a huge party supply store at the West Edmonton Mall. They went for $3 bucks for a pack of a couple of hundred sticks. I had the extra money so I bulked up.

As for walls for buildings, switch to cardboard until you can buy fomecard. Grab some boxes from work.
It's what I do.

Otherwise, you could always start a Tabletop building fund. Very paycheck put away $5 to $10 away. After a month or two, you'll have some good amount of money to buy good supples.

Evil or not, Walmart kicks ass for buying stuff. Best prices around.

Usually I go to a Lowes or Home Depot to get the 1inch think insulation foam sheets. That stuff works well for basing your buildings and what not. It's about $10 to $15 (US dollars) for a piece. Also they usually have 1/4 inch thick wood square sheets that the sell for around $5. That I also use for basing. Usually those are for things that I need to be a little more heavy at the bottom. You can use them for walls of buildings but they are really thick.

Wal-Mart has various wood pieces and foam board in their kids craft area.

Michaels is also really good I usually get my brushes there. I can get a brush for $1.50 that would cost around $5 from GW. Now they might not be as good in quality, but they meet my needs. I am also really hard on my brushes, but I usually use them forever, the last couple I threw away because the wood in them broke when I was using it to move glue around.

Utrecht it is an art store. They have paints that are on par with Games Workshop, and Vallejo Paints for around the same price. They also have texture mediums so you can do things where it looks like the base it covered in rocks, the nice thing is that you can mix your paint into the medium and lay your basing material and first coat it at the same time. You can also get the texture medium at Michaels as well. Utrecht also has different thicknesses of foam board.

Something to look-out for is the miniature trees, they sell them around Christmas for model Christmas Villages. Around the holidays or right after them you can pick them up really cheap. You can play with them as single trees and place them as needed, or you can attach them to a wood or foam base and make a terrain feature.

There is company called Harbor Freight, and they sell tools from China, India, and Pakistan, basically really cheap tools from parts of the world where labor is cheap. The tools they make are not as high quality as the ones you might get at Lowes, Home Depot etc... But they are cheap. I get pin files there, wood carving tools, hobby knife sets. They are cheap so if you ruin them or lose them you aren't out as much as if you paid full price for the GW version. Also there have been a couple of times where I found that the Harbor Frieght brand was the same as the name brand, like the Gordon Brand Hobby Knife came with X-Acto knife blades.

thanks for the ideas keep em coming.

I will check out michaels later today (they tend to be a little bit expensive with all the art students around) but I will see.

home depot is were I get all my pink, blue and purple foam from + pva glue.

I ill check staples for more foam core.

As for tools ,I am training to repair firearms so I always buy quality tools (most of my old crappy ones are now used for hobbys lol)

As for MIchael's I am not 100% sure if they do it in Canada as well but you can get coupons very often for like 15-20% off a single item or sometimes they have like $5-10 off a purchase of $xx.xx...

Something else to look into.

Tewfik wrote:

As for MIchael's I am not 100% sure if they do it in Canada as well but you can get coupons very often for like 15-20% off a single item or sometimes they have like $5-10 off a purchase of $xx.xx...

Something else to look into.

Yup, they do. Plus they have discount days, I believe as well. And a membership which may give you some discounts as well. I need to go back there for some shopping soon.

I have to agree with Michaels. They've got all kinds of good stuff, and I NEVER go in there without at least a 40% off coupon. They typically have a couple each week, one for about 40% off a single item and one for around 20% off everything purchased.

They've got balsa/bass wood, foam core, paints, paint brushes, foam cutters, popsicle sticks, and more. They also carry Woodland scenics which makes some decent terrain stuff.