I was very impressed with the quality of Reaper's master series paints.  So impressed in fact, that I bought a set of light skin tones (shade, base, highlight) to use on some of my paler figures.  These paints come in what looks like eyedropper bottles, and are very simple to dispense onto a palette to mix.

Well, last night I finally got the chance to try the new paints out.  Unfortunately, the first one (the shade color) had a clogged nozzle.  Well "that's ok", I thought.  I've used this sort of paint before, I just need to give it a good squeeze...

To make a long story short, the nozzle's fit into the bottle wasn't as strong as whatever was plugging the thing.  At least 3/4 of the paint wound up all over my shirt and table.  Fortunately, it was pointing towards me and not our new couches, just 10 feet away.

Sadly, the nozzle remains plugged, and I'm now almost out of the shade color.  Reaper doesn't sell these bottles by themselves, so when I run out, I'm S.O.L.  I'm thinking of writing to Reaper to tell them what happened, and hope that they might send me a new shade color, but since it was my idiocy that contributed to the problem. 

Well, maybe I'll let them be the judge.

On a more positive note, the figures I did manage to paint are very subtle.  The shade/base/highlight colors are very close to each other, and by the time I was finished, I wasn't exactly sure that I could see the difference from just painting them a solid color.  but there is some very subtle shading going on there.  I guess that's why they're "master series" - they don't give cartoonish results by themselves.

I now have two very pale skinned "girls with guns" (one redhead), and a few rather pasty looking marines.  I'm planning on making the other marines in the squad various shades of dark, so these "pasty white boys" will provide a nice contrast.

I the end, the "fair skin" set is probably too fair for most of my figures.  It sure as heck won't work on my Mediterranean and Berber figures, but I wasn't expecting it to.  I guess I need to go ahead and get the tanned triad.  Man, I could spend $50 on paints, and still only scratch the surface.

Sigh.  Who said wargaming was a cheap hobby?