First Post in Over a Month Photo Dump

Two posts in one day, after well over a month since my last post? Prepare for a long one! So I guess I got knocked off the blogger bandwagon again. Or I'm still trying to get back on track? I'm not sure, call it what you want. Maybe I need to start thinking of things more like an ebb and flow than on or off track. I still have a sinking feeling things are going to get much worse before they get much better. Oh well. Ebb and flow, right? Anyway, on to model ponies. The reason I haven't posted in so long is because I've been super BUSY. Luckily, most of it has been model related. Or at least horse related. I attended the Berks 4-H Horse Council Model Show (and got ready for it for the 2-3 weeks prior), I attended a Gun Bingo event in Maryland, made 3 sets of champion and reserve champion colored halters as prizes for the 2nd show I attended, Happy Valley Fun Show, I attended 3 nights of the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in Harrisburg as a spectator (although it is on my bucket list to show in that arena!), my family had our annual Leaf Day fall celebration, I made some more progress on my Professional's Choice girths (the 4th is almost ready to ship out), I bought entirely too many new models....the list goes on. And so does being busy, as I type I'm doing laundry, making 4 batches of cookies for a work trip, and getting things ready to make dinner. The work trip is a conference in Ocean City Maryland, so hopefully I will have an Off Topic Tuesday for you tomorrow!

Here is what's been going on within the studio and out since the end of September (all of these photos are quick snaps with my phone, so many are blurry, sorry!):

One of the first things I had to do to get ready for the Berks show was to make show stands! I went with the pot lid holders from Ikea, got some flexible tubing to put over the posts, and made these fleecey sleeves to go over the tubing. Our sewing machine doesn't reverse, so all of these had to be hand tied so they didn't unravel. I was very very happy with the end result though! 

I successfully added rein stops to these reins that go to my hunt tack set. They slide, look nice, and I didn't get any glue on the reins, so they should be removable without a trace :) 

I successfully made a running martingale to further convert that hunt tack set to a jumper set. I was REALLY happy with how this turned out, and proud of one of my first pieces of leather tack. Previous leather pieces have just been halters. You can see how it got the perfect shape in the next photo. 

I am 100% obsessed with how this horse looks in this tack! It fits him perfectly, and he just looks so handsome and striking. He was entered in English performance at both the Berks and Happy Valley shows, and took first in both as a jumpers entry.  With my own running martingale! *aspiring tack maker squee* You can see the full setup further down. The boots are by Christina Brown and the rest of the tack is by Jana Skybova. 

This is a photo from work. We are looking at putting a slatted concrete livestock crossing across this creek so that the farmer can get his animals and equipment back and forth. 

This was show prep for the Berks show. The rails ended up being an epic fail, the paint bled under the tape and I threw them away. I forgot to sand them anyway, so they looked pretty rough. My first rails that I taped and painted turned out well, so I know I can do them, I just have to try again. I painted the pots to make my first flower pot decorations, which you can see further down. 

Also show prep for the Berks Show! I usually tack all my horses beforehand and wrap the stirrups in paper towels if they're metal. So far it's worked out well, and been much less stressful at the show, since I'm still a showing newbie. Eventually, I'll get quicker at tacking and be able to do so at the show. This is a dressage set by Christina Brown on an Ichabod Crane model. He looked good in it, and you can see his results below!

Those flower pots I made. These were my first ones and I was happy with the results! Now I want to make *all the flower pots*

Tacking up before the show! This guy fit this tack very well! I forget who made the saddle, I'll have to look it up and edit this post, but I got it for a very reasonable price. The pad and boots are by Rachel Fail, and the amazing reins are by Rachel Mitchell of Trails End Studio. 

Half of my table setup at the Berks show. These stands that I made worked amazingly. They were a pain to make, but I'm so glad I did. 

The "working" half of my Berks table. 

My Third Times a Charm model winning the American Saddlebred Class in OF Halter at the Berks show. And one of my first NAN Cards!! super exciting!

My Turning Harts pole bending setup who....

...went on to win the CM/AR Performance Western Games class! Another of my first NAN cards :)

My Third Times a Charm model went on to win Reserve Champion Light Breeds in OF Halter. This is doubly exciting, because, as embarrassing as it is to admit, that is the first and only trophy I've ever won. In anything. So happy :) 

My dressage entry won first in OF Performance Dressage. Another of my first NAN cards :)

The entry that I'm perhaps the most proud of, partially because I LOVE this horse in this tack, but also because I made the martingale, the fall colored flower pots, and because CM/AR hunter/jumper is always so competitive. I've entered hunter/jumper classes more than any other performance class, and never placed real well, so this was very exciting! Another of my first NAN cards :)

His other side

A (blurry) photo from the Pennsylvania National Horse Show in Harrisburg. I've always loved coming to this show, and at this point, its very nostalgic for me. Every year I have to go at least once!

Gun Bingo! we didn't win a thing, but it was fun anyway. Dinner was included with our ticket, and they had amazing cream of crab soup, and we ended up sitting next to a nice group of people. 

A progress photo of one of the champion colored prize halters for the Happy Valley Fun Show. These took me a while to make, but I'm really glad I did. They turned out well, were well received at the show, and I think its a good way to get some of my tack out there. 

They were sized on Victrix, but ended up fitting alot of different models. So far they fit 7 different models! You can see just a little bit of the writing on the nose, which says Happy Valley Fun Show. 

Reserve Champion color. Fitting another model well! The writing came out much better on the yellow than the red

I'm glad this idea worked out :)

The full set. In bad lighting, with my bad phone camera 

My table set up at Happy Valley Fun Show! This was my first round table, so that was a little bit of an adjustment. I didn't take quite as many to this show as I did to Berks. Overall, I won 6 champion or reserve champion :)

 Kristian Beverly, of Five Paws Studio, won 3 of the prize halters, and they fit her three models well too! Thanks for the photo op Kristian! One of these halters went to Susan Bensema Young, of Timaru Star II, and I don't know who got the other 2.

Kristian's dundee in his prize halter

Kristian's three models wearing their halters 

That's all the photos I have for right now. The results of these shows, and the fun I've had with the model hobby the past couple months has given me some extra oompf to really get things moving in the studio again, so hopefully I'll have some sales announcements for you soon :) Until next time.....

Monday Model: Turning Harts painted by Sheryl Leisure

Today's monday model is one of the big winners from my 2 recent shows! He is a Turning Harts resin sculpted and painted by Sheryl Leisure, and shows under the name Benelli.

At the Berks 4-H horse council model show on October 13th, he won first in CM/AR Performance Western Games, and first at the Happy Valley Fun Show in Other Western Performance. He was shown doing pole bending at both shows.

He is an artist scale resin, so he is slightly smaller than traditional scale, but he fits this particular tack set very well, minus the browband. Here he is at the Berks show, before the class was pinned. 

He's a little different than my usual taste in models, but there's something I love about him, and he definitely has a spot on the favorites shelf.

Off Topic Tue...its saturday: Yoga What?

trend

trend/

noun

1. 1.

   
   

   a general direction in which something is developing or changing.
2.       "an upward trend in sales and profit margins"
3. 
   
4. 2.

   a fashion.

   
   

   "the latest trends in modern dance"

   
   

   
   

Trends are a funny thing sometimes. They come and go, sometimes they stick around, and other times they are a little off the wall. I'm not sure what category this falls under, but I did a trendy thing. I did THE trendy thing. I did GOAT YOGA. 

I'm gonna let that sink in.......

Yoga. WITH GOATS. 

I have photo proof!

It was every bit as fantastic as you'd imagine. It was a little less....soothing and relaxing than regular yoga, but the goats 100% made up for it. No, they made it better. In some of the poses, I'd feel an ear brush my leg, or a little hoof land on my mat, or the soft, quiet, soothing munching sound. Just in case all of this wasn't enough, they were fainting goats. Which made it even better yet. 

At the end of the yoga, we had some time to cuddle and play with the goats. Some were getting hungry and tried to weasel their way through the fence, and a small one succeeded. The larger one wasn't so successful. She got stuck half way through, began to "faint" a little bit, and got even more stuck in the fence. I hope she didn't know we were laughing at her. 

The sweet goat took a liking to me, and I was told she liked to rub her face on your cheek. She soon proved them right, and I was treated to many goat face rubs, while I scratched her back and otherwise loved up on her. 

1. 
   

This little cutie was named Mariposa

I had every intention of posting this last tuesday, because the goat yoga was the 23rd, but this week ended up really busy. I'm trying to get ready for a model show on October 13th, and I have SO much to do! It's overwhelming! I'm finally making nice show stands for my table, so I cut the flexible tubing this week, and now I'm trying to make soft fabric sleeves to go over the tubing, but I'm having trouble with our sewing machine. I might end up hand sewing these. 24 of them! I still have to name and tag all the horses going, decide who is doing performance, tack up those doing performance, make up the documentation (this is the absolute WORST part for me, and I'm terrible at it!), get all the props I'm using together and make anything I still need, the list goes on....Here's to hoping for a productive week! 

A strip of soft material to cover the tubing, and the problematic sewing machine

I almost forgot! My dick blick order came in since my last post too. Considering recent hobby trends, I'll let you all figure out what these are for ;)

Monday Model: glossy Once Upon a Time

I picked today's model because he just arrived this afternoon! He was a special run at Breyerfest in 2011, and Identify Your Breyer says that there were 375 matte, and 375 glossy made. He is on mold #579, the show jumping warmblood, which was sculpted by Susan Carlton Sifton in 2004. 

He is in great shape, minus a couple minor marks under the gloss, and some faint yellowing on his blanket. I've been a real sucker for this mold ever since I got an Ideal as a kid. He was one of my favorite in the carpet herd, and was played with frequently. I've been searching for a mint Ideal and Mon Gamin for a while, but haven't found the right one at the right time yet. This pretty guy will just have to hold me over until I do. 

Today I ordered $140 worth of paint from Dick Blick because my imagination won't stop :o more on that when it arrives, and I did get some time in my studio space, and made some progress on the rainbow halters:

Nosebands and some prepped hardware. You can see just a little bit of in-progress girth buckles in the lower right corner. 

Nosebands assembled and cheekpieces cut

I was starting to get tired at this point, but I just had to get some of the orange on there tonight!

 I also tried my "medium" sizing halter on a Carrick mold, and voila, a perfect fit!
This halter was sized on a Victrix, and I need to take some time to try it on a lot of models, as I think it will fit a wide variety of heads. So I'll make at least a couple of my geometric print halters in this size.

"Medium" halter on Cortes C. 

Coming Back

The blogger bandwagon must be a bumpy ride, because I sure fell off quick. That said, it didn't happen just because. This summer has been a really rough one in more ways than one
(the past year really), and everything just kind of came to a head in the beginning of August. I'm still trying to get things back to normal. I'm trying to learn as I do, and I think that's the most important part. The past month and a half hasn't been easy, but it feels good to finally be going in a positive direction for the most part, even though the road is still a little bumpy.

When everything came to a head in the beginning of August, I needed to take some time away from the hobby, blogging, and computer time, and many other things, to focus on fixing the things that were spiraling out of control. I've been so focused on figuring out how to stop the spiraling that I've had no desire to work on any studio projects, or even do anything with my models. This means the projects that my imagination has been pleading me to do for months had to be put on hold, such as the rainbow prism halters, the professional's choice smx girths, the carrick I want to paint, the western bridle I've been itching to make, the geometric halters, The sales display I want to make, the list goes on. On friday, I rearranged one of my shelves to be able to fit some more models on it, and moved my tack collection to a different shelf, in an attempt to get some hobby spark back. And tonight, I finally went downstairs to my studio space

My basement studio table, and some storage areas.

and worked on some of the girths, and the rainbow halters.

Brown sizing halter is done, and the nosebands and hardware prep have been started. The upper right corner is some girth hardware and parts.

I had to force myself a little bit, but I'm really glad I did. It worked. Now I really WANT to make progress on these projects, and see how they turn out. Hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow night after my work to make some progress, and I'll try to do another monday model post! In the meantime, here are some of my new hobby additions for the past couple months, including this AMAZING set of jumping boots from Cristina Brown, of On The Bit Studio, and some photos of the things I've done since we left off, because in order to get better, you have to balance the difficult things with some fun. 

The jumping boots! I love them. The Rafael resin came to me early on in the summer, probably about June. I kind of bought him on a whim as I'd never seen one before, and I love him. He seems like he will be versatile for performance. 

Hind boot detail

Front boot detail. They even have "carbon fiber" strike pads :)

Love this guy! I'm hoping I'll have his matching rainbow halter done soon. 

My first Peter Stone trotting drafter

Like everyone else, I love this mold! Can't wait until we get more color choices.

My tack making view. When I want to paint, I sit on the other side of the table, about where Templado's tail is. I don't have any active painting projects right now, so that area of the table has gotten a little crowded. 

Sizing halter for the Andalusian Stallion mold. He has been a real challenge to fit and I'm still not thrilled. We'll see how these turn out. 

I held a cute little salamander at a work training.....

had a delicious chicken bacon ranch pizza....

Won first (out of 2) with my April Tack Month halter at the local fair.....

passed the one year anniversary of having my own saddle....

and had some delicious (half price!) sushi.