A long, long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, I bought one of these magnifying headbands. At the time I thought it was a great idea. When it arrived, I excitedly put it on, whacked on the highest magnification lens in the box and tried painting a mini. It was horrible!

Firstly, I just felt a right berk. That big, heavy lamp on the front was just ridiculous. And I had to hold my minis right up against my face and go almost cross-eyed to see anything in focus. Had it been a roaring success, I might have been able to overlook the dorkiness of it. But it wasn’t. So I couldn’t.

Anyway, earlier this evening, Mrs Blinky asked me to go down to the workshop so she could partake in some in-front-of-the-telly exercise, without me chipping in with hilarious commentary from the sidelines. But it was too cold (I turned the heating off weeks ago and refuse to turn it on just for an hour or so) so I remained resolute in staying in the house.

I remembered my dorky headband and we came to a pact – she would dance about in front of the telly and I would STFU and stay in the kitchen on the condition that I could try out my magnifying glasses again without her either taking a photo or laughing at my ridiculously oversized Maz-eyes.

On that basis, I thought I’d try them out again. Instead of the x 3.5 magnifying lens, I thought I’d start small and went for x2. Man, what a difference! They are amazing. Painting eyes and faces? I’m not going to say it’s a doddle, but it’s about a million times easier than squinting and hoping for the best. At just x2 magnification, the focal distance is about 12″ (at x3.5 it’s nearer 3-4″) which is a nice comfortable distance for painting details.

I thought I needed to use 000 or even 5/0 brushes to paint facial details and eyes. It turns out not – you just need to be able to see! I’ve been loving using my Pro Arte Rennaisance sized-2 brush(es) for most things lately (it’s about the size of the old orange-tipped GW “standard” brush). With my Maz-eyes, I can even use it to paint eyes on 28mm minis!

I love it. And that LED? It’s brilliant. Absolutely amazing for illuminating faces and getting rid of every trace of a shadow, without changing the colour tone of the paint. With such a big stupid box flopping about on my forehead, I know I can run it for hours on 3xAAA batteries and not worry about them running out or the LEDs getting dimmer.

Now I’ve just got to convince Mrs Blinky to do more dancing about in front of the telly, so I can get some more time to myself with my big dorky headband.