Flattered!

Holy SMOKES, are you guys awesome!

I am genuinely surprised and absolutely delighted by the level of response the raffle has had, even just so far. I've been out of town all weekend, and sneakily checking up on your comments on my phone, and it's been so much fun. You are all so kind! All of your compliments just makes me want to keep doing what I'm doing!

While I do read each and every one of the comments I receive (and promptly smile like an idiot), I don't have the time to reply to every one. (Most of the replies would be along the lines of "OH MY GOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH WOW" anyway, because I'm not so good at accepting compliments and am easily overwhelmed by kind people like yourselves.)

I've been doing my best to reply to comments that pose a direct question, or ones that I feel like I have something to say in response to (besides above babbling). But I didn't have a post planned for tonight and thought it would just be easier to answer your questions and do some listless chatting here.

• First up, I had a couple people ask about the horse modeling the five-point breastplate in a post I made earlier this week. That would be this gal...

...a long-time "in the works" custom of mine from the G4 Driving mold, who the eagle-eyed might recall from this post over the summer...

...when she still had the first paint job I tried before I realized she had some fundamental issues, and a sloppy appy paint job wouldn't fix them. (Life is so unfair.)

She was one of my very first attempts at sculpting a whole new neck, and I'm not exactly a pro customizer. I really like the idea of her, and I have her just hanging around, waiting for me to fix her up (something is definitely wrong in her withers-ish area, among many other things).

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my customizing adventures these days are pretty much exclusively for the purpose of making myself performance horses, and one day she'll hopefully grace the hunter ring. 

Or maybe I'll just try another head-down, nose-vertical custom from the Driving mold in the future, because apparently that's what I do!

• Dressagekid noticed that I am the same person who ran a customizing blog a while back, featuring my adventures in making Traditional scale versions of the puppets used in the stage adaptation of War Horse, and asked how that was going. 

The life-size puppets in question, for those of you who missed my past escapades.

Short answer: it isn't. 

Longer answer: I am still very much in love with that play, the puppets, the way they're created, the story, and theater in general, but that project was a little too fiddly and ill-planned to really pan out how I wanted it to, and eventually it fizzled out.  I was also running that blog at a time when I was kind of figuring out what I liked and what I wanted to do, messing around and making fun customs in the meantime. I now really feel like I've found my niche with mini tack, and would rather spend my free time working on it than on more extravagant customs. 

(Just between you and me, Dressagekid, I still am entirely planning on making a miniature War Horse puppet at some point in my life. Just in Stablemate scale, of course.)

On the studio front, I have the lace prepared for the stock halter, just waiting to go. I have a chunk of time tomorrow afternoon to assemble it, and I thought it could be fun to kind of do a step-by-step walk through of how that's done. Halters are fun and relatively un-fiddly to make for your models- they're more like assembling a kit than creating a miniature multi-media sculpture, like saddles. 

As for which mold to make the stock halter for, I'm thinking this guy:

But would you guys rather see a different mold? The same G3 Quarter Horse the stable halter is for, maybe?

And finally, another plug for Anna from Ebb & Flow Studios, who is my best friend, spirit guide, co-mini tack maker, and general inspiration in life. Her most recent post features a video how-to of how she makes Stablemate scale tongue buckles, which is kind of similar to how I make mine, and shows off how mini tack shamelessly cheats in some areas where Traditional scale tack couldn't. The video not only features adorable pumpkin finger nails, but also a kind of Bob Ross, relaxing vibe. 

That's it for today! I'm recording all of your entries, throwing them all into the pot so to speak, so keep 'em coming!