can i say i was thinking that it was an existing model and get swamped with your 3D bullets too?

I think you wouldn't need to use reference images when you have the actual object... my gundams turned out fine (despite my great lack of experience at the time) and i eventually dumped the ref images (despite me being so careful when taking a picture of them they still turned out badly aligned) in favour of just modeling the things just by looking and touching...