Yes, many hours did go into these armies and thank you for all the kind words.
I remember the first time I saw the grendier dwarves in a boxed set (50 orcs and 50 dwarves) and that was what hooked me on mass battles. I used to get the fantasy warriors metal blisters at a comic shop down town. Throw in the Salvatore books and I was (am) a lifer.
I love the Celtos sculpts but they don't really feel like fantasy elves. They're more like Celtic folklore (Aos Si or Sidhe I think) which is awesome too. However, I needed drow that looked totally different from the surface elves of D&D. I like the Reaper scultps for wizards and command models and I use GW Cold Ones and Chariots simply because there is nothing else available.
As for the shields, I found some designs I liked off of the internet. Then I changed the colours to brown and cream and doctored them using the vignette option so they're dark at the edges. Then I glued them to black bristol board and cut the circles out manually. I tried to use a punch to get them perfect but they were too thick to get the punch through.
I did the same thing for my Dol Amroth proxies.
Here are some more dwarf characters.
Also, if there is something you want a closer look at on the table let me know and I'll take pics of it.