'Toy Story' from Iain W - 28mm Napoleonic French 2nd battalion Grenadiers a pied

For the Toy theme I have to go back to one of my earliest memories, I was about three years old and my mum was pulling my fingernails off one by one while telling me each time" this isn't going to hurt" followed by her yanking off each fingernail! This wasn't an example of sadism but a rather an aspect of a skin disease which meant if you stuck a plaster on my skin, when you took it off it ripped off a layer of skin, this resulted in me losing most of the skin off my hands and my nails catching on virtualy everthing , causing me pain as the nerves still worked! So it was for the best but I guess  I've probably got trust issues? What it did mean was I couldnt play with anything hard, like say Lego or blocks or the like, but I pinched a melamine covered board and on that I was able to make things out of plastecine, a modeling clay that I found quite soothing. I built volcanoes and black and white aliens , it was at this point I aquired a book that I realise now must have been my dads but from that day was mine and which I still have, a 1960s coffee table book on uniforms from the French revolution up until the start of WW1 in  mostly original prints. 

The book gave me a myriad of subjects to make , I copied uhlans, Sardinians and all sorts of weird and wonderful soldiers, it's the book that got me hooked on making soldiers from a very early age, before I could read I was trying to make a czapka! In addition to the original prints there were photos, all in colour , of French  soldiers of the first empire, which I found fascinating, I wanted to know who and what everyone in all the pictures were, I now do but it's taken a fair amount of time! The first page was a painting by baron Lejune, a Napoleonic French officer and painter , the painting of Borodino has a wealth of detail!

 There was one print that made a particular impact, a grumpy looking chap with a blue coat and fur hat, a grenadier of the Imperial Guard as I now know, so I present in 28mm the second battalion of the grenadiers of the Imperial Guard of the first empire of France.

Lovely Perry metal figures, this unit completes my Imperial Guard for now, all units in metal and in this one case full price as I'm such a cheapskate! Excellent flag by GMB.

24 x 5 is 120 plus 50 theme points make 170 

All the best 

Iain