As 2024 is limping towards it’s end as I write this, I thought it be a good time to reflect back on what we have achieved over the past year with SMS, even though it is a little cliché. January started off with our production lines running full speed to restock after strong sales in December and to keep up with retailer orders which also skyrocketed during January as our retailers restocked after their busy holiday period as well. Our advertisers copy of Model Car Truck Motorcycle World magazine turned up at this point, featuring an in-depth interview with myself about SMS and what we are all about.   You can still purchase this issue via the Guideline Publications website or digitally via PocketMags.   Oz Wheels is a brand new range of 1/64 Australian diecast cars produced by our friends at Diecast Distributors Australia. We received a big box...

This year has been a super busy year for us with travel for shows. We’ve been to Melbourne for Model Expo, Wollongong for the NSW Model Show, Brisbane for QMHE and Adelaide for the SA Model Expo, plus a few others in between. For the final show of the year, I travelled up to Canberra for the annual ACT Scale Model Society’s ScaleACT model show. We’ve been attending ScaleACT since 2018 and it is always a pleasure to head up to our nation’s capital. With the Ute loaded up with stock and entries for the competition, I left home at 4:30am on the Friday and drove just over 8 hours up the Hume Freeway, arriving at the first stop, the National Dinosaur Museum in Gold Creek, ACT, just after 12:30pm.     I always make sure to drop into the Dinosaur Museum each year I head up. I drive past...

Candy colours are created using a type of painting technique using a clear colour paint applied over a metallic base. Whilst generally used on car models, they can be used on a variety of other subjects such as Gundam. How the effect works is that the Clear Colour itself is a transparent paint that has no solid pigmentation to it. They are coloured using tint dyes which will retain the clear transparency whilst keeping a strong, vibrant colour. In this tutorial, I'll show how easy it is to create an effective Candy effect on a model car.  For this tutorial, we will be demonstrating the effect on a 1/64 diecast Oz Wheels Panel Van.  To begin with, after first priming the model, we apply a base coat of a gloss Black. In this case, I've used Chassis Black first (which is a semi gloss black) and then top coated that with Super Clear to...

The South Australian Plastic Modellers Association (SAPMA) held the 41st South Australian Model Expo over the weekend of September 28th & 29th 2024. It was an early start on the Friday, leaving home at 4:30am to travel west to Adelaide as we once again hit the road and travelled over to be a part of the show. Rolling in to the City of Churches just after 11am, first stop was to see our friends at Hobby Habit in Melrose Park, to drop off a restock order for them and to catch up to see how everything is going. Hobby Habit is considered to be the largest hobby store (across 2 locations) in Adelaide, stocking a wide range of hobby products including our full range of paints. I also managed to find a couple of the new Oz Wheels 1/64 scale diecast cars that feature our logo on the rear panel!...