INSTAR - From the Latin meaning “Figure"
We are a small family business based in the beautiful flat county of Norfolk, UK that, unlike many other paint brands on the market who use a major manufacturer to produce their paints, manufacture our products in-house, by hand, everything from the mixing, testing and bottling.
This allows us full control over the production process allowing us to create ultra high quality paint that is found nowhere else on the market and because we don't make products for anyone else, makes our products highly unique.
Since our founding in 2017, we aimed to create a brand that was colour matched to the most popular brand on the planet, in bottles at a much better price line to bring down the cost of the hobby and make it more accessible to painters on tighter budgets.
Since 2017 we have undergone several changes going from a standard run of the mill, traditional based paint formula and used our material science knowledge and understanding to create a fully unique and advanced formulation in 2019 which we call the Alpha range. Its unique viscosity, coverage, handling, mixing qualities and the ability to be transitioned to several different painting styles as well as being able to be fully frozen and defrosted with no detrimental effects are not found anywhere else on the market and remains a tightly guarded secret to this day. There have been imitations attempted by other companies, but all have fallen short, while they may be able to cover a single area that Alpha can do, none of them have been able to replicate the uniqueness of the paint
But even with this next generation paint, we still maintain our price line to make paint and painting more accessible to people with tighter budgets and don't solely aim our paints at the professional market, our aim was always to make miniature painting fast, fun and affordable.
We also have fast turnaround times on our production as well, since we don't have to rely on third party companies to supply a paint product with a large minimum order quantity. Since we manufacture it all in-house from stage one means that in most cases we can have orders ready to go in as little as 24 hours for any amount of paint.
Other than paint formulations, we also create a wide range of additives and work with some companies to really make your paint unique and customisable in a line we call Provectus, Latin for Advanced. These additives allow you to turn the base Alpha range into the paint you want it to be without having to go through the expense of buying a whole new product from another company which you may only use once and never again just to get a desired effect, Provectus will allow your paints to be more Matte, More Glossy, Drybrushing, Metallic etc, the only limiting factor is your imagination.
The highlight product of the Provectus range is undoubtedly our Water+. Thanks to a marketing blunder, it was released at the wrong time, the day before April Fools Day 2018 and initially wasn't taken seriously. Water+ very quickly stopped becoming a joke when painters realised the potential of the product and started to be taken seriously. By creating a much finer dispersion of paint, Water+ allows for much smoother coats of paint and a more even dispersal of pigment which means far less pooling and tide marks on miniatures, usable with practically every paint on the market, Water+ is a real game changer in painters lives, and again...is another tightly guarded secret.
Our Metal+ additive, the first of its kind in the miniature world, launched on 3rd March 2019 after six months in development, is also starting to make ground in the miniature world, using real metal rather than mica, allows you to turn any paint on the market into a metallic with some surprising effects depending on the colour you choose to mix it into, and it does all this, while thinning the paint at the same time. 2021 will see an extension and improvement to this product to set it apart from copycat products that are starting to appear on the market
We also have our SPECTRUM range in five amazing colours that allows you to create your own colourshift effects and tints for metallics to really make your models stand out on the table.
We're also conscious of our impact on the environment. As well using fully recyclable packaging, we also recycle all of our paint waste using simple separation methods, from this, the solid waste is ground up and used as landscaping material while the water is reused to clean all of our equipment. Our new lines for 2021 will push this even further.
We really hope you will become part of our journey and discover the wonders that our range has to offer your painting hobby and if you have any questions, by all means send us an email!
Thank you,
Ian Delaney
Owner of INSTAR