Project Madonna

This is my long term project. I have been doing this at work during break times and odd moments. I guess it is time I explained it.
I want to make a small medieval FEMALE warband, loosely based on the historical Free Companies. For years, I have been collecting the odd miniature here and there. Some of these are no longer of any use because scale creep has made them too small. Now, Michi has donated me a load of Sandra Garrity Reaper sculpts, and I have also bought 24 Shadowforge miniatures which need converting. It is time to start.

The Look
My warband must look like a homogenous unit if they are to look good on the tabletop. That means they must look
a) believable
b) all from roughly the same time period.
c) be painted the same colours

Leaving the painting till later on, neither the Reaper figures nor the Shadowforge figures are ideal and I will go into that:

Sandra Garrity figures: the problem

Sandra Garrity is an excellent sculptor. Being female herself, she doubtless wants to do justice to the female form and the sculpts are not caricatures with huge breasts. Faces and hair are her strong points. Unfortunately the problem is that many of her female figures, being fantasy, are a mixture of diferent periods and genres. Instead of helmets, they wear tiaras on their heads. The armour is decorative and more Greco-Roman than I would like.

Shadowforge figures: the problem

The Shadowforge sculpts by Neil Harrison are all of his Valkyrie range which are dressed and equipped as Dark Age damsels. If I was doing a Norman army that would be great. But I need to update them to the 14-15th century. So mostly the helmets, shields and boots are wrong and need to be modified.
Another problem I did not foresee is the bows on the archers. I was going to replace their small girly bows with medieval longbows. But, the bows are separate with the hands attached.I am not skilled enough to sculpt new hands. So I somehow must modify 12 bows to make them into longbows.