[Nightcrow]

Thanks! But don’t sell yourself short, Betrluk! Frankly, it’s looking much better than I thought I could pull off! 😀 So you just might surprise yourself if you ever do take a stab at it…

much better then i could pull off for sure haha.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Stormbreeze, I think your fox looks like Lassie! Her colors are perfect for a Collie or Sheltie. 😀 Maybe a Collie or Sheltie owner will be smitten with her!

Here’s my lovely girl! She’s a soft, clean white with rich dark brown markings. I think she’s beautiful, but I was hoping for a darker fox, so she’s up for trade.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Now it’s time to play with paint!

Thank goodness her broken areas are primarily a single color, and she didn’t break right at a dramatic blending. 🙂 Fortunately, I have a lot of metallic paints in the green-blue-purple range, but of course it’s hard to tell what they really look like in the bottle! So I did a little testing, first.

Trying to figure out what paints I have that might match:

Applying a couple layers of the blue that seems closest:

Not a bad match! I’ll have to do some blending and shading on top of it, and then I’m going to try contacting Windstone to see if they can send me one of the markers they use for the gold points, as I’ve seen other repairmakers do, so I can touch up her little gold dashes along the wing edge and repair her “beauty mark”. So only two more steps, hurrah!

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Apoxie time! Boy, this stuff is frustratingly hard to deal with in small places. D: I’m completely out of practice, too — used to use it back in my model horse days, but that’s been so long!

Pics of her resculpted facial scale and wing curve:

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

My fox has arrived!

I do like her – I had been hoping for a darker fox, yay! I’m not 100% committed yet, though (I’m still finding that I’m really drawn to the silver ones) and I can’t help but think that she’d look awfully good alongside somebody’s Red Panda critter collection. So I guess if anyone’s interested in swapping or buying, let me know! Till then, she gets to hang out on the shelf with my PYO wolf and poor unpainted little Kitsune. 🙂

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

They’ll always get it for just barely higher than your max, which means you probably would’ve paid that much too, but by sniping you weren’t given a chance.

I’ve seen a couple of people say things like this in the thread now, and I’m a little bit confused by it, because… this is just how bidding works! All bidding, not just sniping. Whether they sniped it or just bid after you, the next winning bidder’s offer is *always* going to be “just a few dollars higher” than your max — there are set increments for bidding, generally linked to price (so an item currently at $1 may have increments of $.50, while an item at $100 will have increments of $5 or $10, and one at $1000 will have $100 increments, etc.) so the next bid will always be [1 increment] above your max bid, regardless of whether they did it on day 2 or day 7.

No matter how high the bidder’s max is, Ebay will always place the “current price” at the next increment above the last bidder’s maximum, and then bid up to their maximum as other offers come in. Example: your max bid is $50, and Sarah comes along and puts in a max bid of $100. The displayed “winning bid” amount will be $55, because that’s one increment over the last person’s maximum bid! If you came right back and bid $60, Ebay would raise Sarah’s bid to $65, another increment over your bid. And so on, until your bid was high enough to reach the amount [Sarah’s maximum + 1 increment].

Since Ebay will automatically bid for you up to your maximum, you don’t have to be online at the exact moment the auction closes in order to win; you just have to have a maximum bid that’s higher than the sniper’s. (This can actually work for you and against the sniper! Because the downside to bidding last-minute is that you don’t have time to make another offer; if the price is $45 bid by Member X, and you bid $100 with ten seconds left on the clock… well, if it turns out that Member X’s maximum was $200, you don’t have time to make another bid! The auction closes with a $105 winning bid by Member X, and you’re just out of luck.)

Long story short: they call it a “maximum bid” for a reason. If you’re upset that someone topped your maximum bid by $10 because you were willing to go $20 higher… you didn’t actually enter your maximum. And the winning bid isn’t necessarily your competitor’s maximum, so you might not win anyway, even if you did come back and try to re-snipe it.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Hi Melody…

I’m just going to throw this one at ya’ 😉 I’m squeaking for a possible production of the “Metaltronic” color scheme. :p I believe you could make some pretty good “cha-ching” and probably make some forum members VERY happy!! Thanks for listening… 8)

Okay, since someone else said it first, I have to chime in! I am SO IN LOVE with the “Metaltronic” griffins, especially the female! Most of my griffins are in storage right now, alas, but I would definitely add a Metaltronic member or three to the family if they entered production in the future. I think they’d look great with my Copper Patina female, particularly!

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but everyone’s foxes so far are just beautiful, and I’m getting really excited! Congrats to everybody who got one of these little treasures, and I’ll definitely be hanging around the thread till mine comes, so I can post pictures. 😀

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

I actually much prefer last minute bidders – it saves everyone money because people aren’t going back and forth one upping each other in a pissing contest . Bottom line – bid as high as you’re willing to pay – if the other person gets it, they get it. If you would have paid more, no one is stopping you from bidding more. I don’t agree with calling someone “sneaky” because they were willing to pay more than another bidder.

This is how I feel, too; last-minute bids just seem more efficient to me! After all, there’s nothing stopping eighteen different people from putting in a last-minute bid; Ebay will sort out whose bid is highest, saving everybody from having to inch the price up bit by bit and maybe get caught up and swept into bidding more than they’d planned. It also means you don’t have to check on your bid every single day and keep re-bidding (or bite your nails hoping somebody hasn’t pushed it up past your maximum amount and now you have to watch the auction go on for days while knowing you can’t have it).

*shrug* I don’t do well with tension, I guess! I just want to make my max offer and find out immediately if I’m going to get a dragon or not, so I don’t have to suffer. 🙂 (I ended up not even bidding on the Lap Dragon I wanted on Ebay last week, because I waited till the last minute and by the time I was ready to put in a bid, it’d gone higher than I could go. So I was disappointed I didn’t get it, but I didn’t have to angst over it for four days, at least!)

Ooh what Lap Dragon was that?

The “Water Sprite” test paint Lap Dragon! *wistful sigh* I yearned after her for days! And then I actually ended up missing the end of the auction by about ten minutes, but as the closing price was higher than my max would’ve been (by about, uh, $40-50, wow!) I wouldn’t have won anyway.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

As others have said – unless you know the market for that kind of item really well, it would be really risky! And the people who know the market really well for Windstones are… basically us. ;D

Also, you say “they just sniped it for fun, which isn’t fun for the people who were watching it for seven days” — but how do you know they weren’t watching it for seven days, too? They could well have been waiting just as long as you for the auction to end, checking the current bid amount to make sure it hasn’t gone over their budget and hoping their max bid will be enough.

I’ve seen a number of people on the Forums reselling things because either 1) they got it and decided that, in person, it wasn’t quite what they wanted; or 2) something unexpected came up (car repair, vet expense) after they got the item and they need the money.

The thing that bugs me though is people who snipe as a game almost just to see if they can win something. I am not saying people do that here but there have been pieces I really wanted in the past and clearly let others know and bid my max and then got sniped at the end only to see that person turn around and re-sell or trade that item later. So it’s almost like they didn’t really want it but just sniped it for fun and that is not fun for people who were watching the item for 7 days who really wanted it! If I see others really want an item more than I do, I don’t bid on it period. I only bid on things I love.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

I actually much prefer last minute bidders – it saves everyone money because people aren’t going back and forth one upping each other in a pissing contest . Bottom line – bid as high as you’re willing to pay – if the other person gets it, they get it. If you would have paid more, no one is stopping you from bidding more. I don’t agree with calling someone “sneaky” because they were willing to pay more than another bidder.

This is how I feel, too; last-minute bids just seem more efficient to me! After all, there’s nothing stopping eighteen different people from putting in a last-minute bid; Ebay will sort out whose bid is highest, saving everybody from having to inch the price up bit by bit and maybe get caught up and swept into bidding more than they’d planned. It also means you don’t have to check on your bid every single day and keep re-bidding (or bite your nails hoping somebody hasn’t pushed it up past your maximum amount and now you have to watch the auction go on for days while knowing you can’t have it).

*shrug* I don’t do well with tension, I guess! I just want to make my max offer and find out immediately if I’m going to get a dragon or not, so I don’t have to suffer. 🙂 (I ended up not even bidding on the Lap Dragon I wanted on Ebay last week, because I waited till the last minute and by the time I was ready to put in a bid, it’d gone higher than I could go. So I was disappointed I didn’t get it, but I didn’t have to angst over it for four days, at least!)

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Wow, I don’t know what that second Curlie is, but I like it!!

The second curlie is an Emerald Color Shift. Here’s the link to the postponed production section for the description. 🙂

http://windstoneeditions.com/products/curled-dragon-emerald-color-shift

Wow, that’s awesome! I saw the color-shift Fledgling, but hadn’t seen the Curlie yet and it threw me. 😀

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Wow, I don’t know what that second Curlie is, but I like it!!

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Hahaha, I’m so glad that I’m not alone when it comes to wondering, “Why so many blue-eyed dragons?” 😀 Honestly, I’ve been asking this (mostly to myself, but I know I’ve said on the Forums several times, as well) for years and years. 😀

I think the main reason I fell in love so hard with the White dragons was that it’s so rare to find a white animal figure that doesn’t have blue eyes! The gold really just made the whole thing, and attracted me so strongly that I began a lifelong collection… Like you said, I think the yellow eyes are just ‘more realistic’, while blue eyes would have struck me as cutesy or babyish or anthropomorphic.

(I’m with you in finding a lot of the recent schemes too bright/gaudy, too; I do love Blue Morpho, but Amethyst and Violet Flame are just a bit much for me — too brass-gold and contrast-y to really draw me in. But then, I’m also not such a huge fan of bright gold, so maybe that’s what makes the difference for me…?) As far as bright colors go, I love the Whites, and I really like the old Emerald, too, and Ruby was probably my favorite of the red schemes we’ve had! They’re bright without being glaring, and (aside from White) they both feature a fair amount of shading instead of high-contrast colors, so I think that’s what works for me visually: bright is okay, as long as it’s several related bright shades.

Come to think of it, some of my favorites among the more recent test colors back that up — Turquoise, for instance, was instant love for me! (I like the Turquoise Copper, too!) The Blue Ice Emperor tempts me, too.

I have been preferring the bright metallic colors to sell wholesale, because they show up well on a store shelf. The subtler colors aren’t as suited for that purpose. A color that is “production” needs to be as simple and foolproof to paint as possible.

While I agree that brighter metallic colors stand out better at the far end of a Gift Shop, or really make a display window stand out, I’ve never been a fan of colors like Amethyst, Emerald Peacock, Violet Flame or even the latest Blue Morpho schemes. They look too much like toys, and not really like dragons. True, most everything Windstone makes is fantastical, but I prefer more realistic, believable color schemes. The original retired colors like Emerald, White and Peacock are believable, because dragons and gem tones are easily associated. White could be related to Pearls, or Ancient, wise dragons.

Theoretically “production” means items that we make in large batches, and always have on hand, boxed and ready to ship to retailers. They are our standard colors, painted by our production painters in pretty, but not overly detailed paint jobs.

We have changed the meaning of the term “limited production” several times!

When we started using the words “Limited production”, that was what we called colors that we were retiring, but still had some inventory left.
It then came to mean items that we would paint from time to time in smaller batches, but we wouldn’t always have them boxed and ready to ship instantly. This was important for gift stores to know, especially around Christmas.

Then “limited production” came to mean small batches of special colors that I painted and signed, but weren’t numbered, like limited editions.

Now, since we make almost everything in small batches, “limited production” has come to be what we call most of the newer colors we make.

How we decide what colors to make as production or limited production: It is kinda random…
If you have noticed, we constantly do lots of wild “test paints” that we sell on ebay. If one of them is a reasonably easy color to paint, seems popular, and is a color we need, it might get made as production or limited production color next. For example, we retired the “Red Fire” color, so “Fire Berry” could be next in line to replace it. And although the “Black Rainbow” is one of my favorites, we already have a couple basic black dragon colors, so I don’t want to make that one a limited production color yet.

Starting from the last paragraph, I’m really hoping that Fire Berry doesn’t look anything even similar to Violet Flame. I understand that if Fire Berry does, in fact, become a Production or Limited Production color scheme, that it will be altered somewhat to keep the Test Paint “special”. I’m just hoping that it’s not altered in such a way that it’s too bright [I really think it’s bright enough], or have blue eyes. Most of Windstone’s Production/LP colors have blue eyes… I think if the eyes are going to be changed at all, they should be Peach, or at least, basic Orange.

As for another Limited Production color… I’m going to put in a squeak here for Sand dragons. That color scheme is probably the most epic since the LP Ocelot Gryphons. The Black Rainbow scheme is nice.. but like you said, the Black Gold and Black Violet Peacock color schemes are still currently on market. And both have blue eyes.. seriously, lol… what is with the blue eyes? What I would REALLY love, is if Moss were released as a LP paint. Emerald Peacock is more blue, and fantasy-based. An Earthy green color scheme would be awesome.. especially if Fire Berry was released as a Production/LP color. Moss and Fire Berry really compliment each other well 🙂
I’d love to see a more “true” green color available since Emerald was retired.

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Nightcrow]

Well, most of the large sculpts haven’t appeared in Lavender Pearl yet — as far as I can see, there have been no Lavender Pearl Lap Dragons, Scratchers, Emperors, Spectrals, Sun/Moon Orientals, Old Warriors, or Secret Keepers… unless somebody knows something I don’t, anyway.

Oh no! to the Aquamarine paint shortage! Poor little Aquamarines, I hope you can figure out a match at some point so the family can grow again. Perhaps all us Forum users can band together and write letters to the paint maker? 🙂 We’d probably be happy to petition them for more Aquamarine paint!

Now I’m extra glad that I hadn’t decided to buy any Aquamarine dragons yet, because I couldn’t decide between Aquamarine and waiting to see if Glacier showed up on other sculpts! (And can I take a minute to say: I absolutely LOVE Olimpia’s “Mineral Spring”, and the two “Turquoise” test paints you’ve done?! If Aquamarine paint runs out, and Glacier isn’t popular enough or easy enough to translate onto other sculpts, I’d go for Mineral Spring or Turquoise Lap Dragons in a heartbeat! *squeak* )

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[Author]

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