Silesti Makes

Build

I’ve not played any Dragon Age games before this one but as soon as I saw the Lyrium dagger I knew it was something I needed to make. Finding the Red dagger model, it seemed only right to make the pair.

These were pretty simple both were printed on the Anycubic M5s resin printer with the exception of the blade on the blue dagger which I knew I wated to make from blue acrylic. The initial plan was possibly to have this illuminated from within the handle of the dagger itself, but the scale was just too small for the stuff I have readily at hand.

The blue dagger was a single piece print, so after a bit of sanding was ready to go. The red dagger was a 3-part print and so needed to be glued and the seams filled. Stick-up was with CA glue and I used some UV cure resin to fill the gaps in the seams, this work SO much better than I’d expected an is a technique I will continue to use!

The blue dagger blade was shaped with my mini belt sander and finished by hand-sanding the bevels in.

Finish

The blue dagger handle was primed and then sprayed with a few good coats of gold acrylic spray. The blue acrylic blade was airbrushed using Vallejo Space Dust colour shifted airbrush paint and I chose the Electric Blue / Intense Violet combo giving it a number of coats. The space-dust itself is translucent and this gives an additional dimension when you look at the blade especially in natural light as you get scatter from inside the blade coming through. The blade was secured with CA glue at the base and I used double-sided tape to secure the tapered elements to the blade rather than risking CA glue affecting the finish. The gems were given the same paint treatment as the blade, but as they were 3d printed I used a light blue base coat.

The red dagger was primed and painted black and then I airbrushed the pearlescent red over the blade. a waft of black dusted over that gave the tone I wanted while keeping the sheen and I then hand-painted in the blight tendrils and used a wash to give the blade more depth. Some brown and red tones added to the handle give a little more texture and depth to that element too.

Music

The Lyrium Dagger