Insta-buddies

 This week or so we're currently in is always crazy. There's the leaving of the Christmas guests, the coming of the New Years guests, the weird feelings you have around Christmas decorations after Christmas, and the apprehension that oh my God it's going to be 2015 on Thursday.

Luckily, in the midst of the madness Anna has made the two state jump to come hang out with me for New Years, and share some good old fashioned tack time. She came bearing supplies for a Portuguese bridle, and this drool-worthy muley recently completed by Sue Kern. 

This girl is going to be a knock-out in the performance ring! Watch out, Region 2!

While Anna suffers through the 13 or 14 tiny buckles on that bridle of hers, I've finally been tackling a tack dream of mine:

I'm sure I've talked about wanting to do this awesome RZ Dutton saddle on here before, but it's finally happening! I'm kind of waiting for this project to backfire in my face, but so far, so good...

Anna and I have also both recently created Instagram accounts to share our tack and post little progress updates that don't really merit a blog post on their own. While I love Blogger and plan on keeping this blog running as long as I can, Instagram is great in how fast it is- when I just want to share one step of a saddle, I can have it up and out there in less than 10 seconds. It's also been fun to explore kind of a different demographic of the hobby- I never knew there were so many of us model horse weirdos!

If you're so inclined, you can keep up with my antics by following @stageleftstudios over on there. I'm kind of imagining a weekly segment here on the blog where every weekend I'll post a recap of the best of Instagram that week, so nothing gets left out? We'll see!

Update: The blog has new clothes! I'll probably futz with it a little more, but this is more or less the 2015 look. Woo!

Holiday Raffle Winners!

(This is my 100th post! More celebrations on that topic to come!)

First, of all, WOW.

Anna and my holiday raffle completely exceeded our wildest expectations. Our initial goal for ticket sales was $50, enough to buy a family in a developing nation a goat, but we ended up raising a whopping $200! That's enough to not only get a goat, but also a school kit of supplies for a child, and clean water for a family for life.

That's incredible!

I am just blown away by all the entrant's generosity and holiday spirit!

Anna and I jumped on Skype this afternoon to draw the winners "together" via random.org, and here's what we came up with:

Our first winner is ticket #24, owned by Carol Owens, and the second winner is ticket #201, which belongs to Jennifer Cole.

Congratulations to our winners, and thank you so, so much to everyone who entered!

Merry Christmas!

Blogidays Day Eight: Stirrups Tutorial

On the eighth day of Blogidays my true love gave to me... a guest post! 

When this posts, I'll be out Christmas tree hunting and will definitely not have any studio news to share, so Anna was kind enough to help me keep up the Blogidays roll. 

This is a perfect topic for those of you wanting to try out mini tack, but not sure you really want to invest a lot of cash into it yet. Take it away, Anna!

Make Your Own Stablemate Stirrups

For as long as I can remember, I've alway thought - Why buy it when I can make something almost as good myself? This mentality has lead to everything from trying to knit my own socks to horror story quality customs. 

However, this idea stubbornness works well when what you're trying to make is so small, most people probably won't be able to see it very well anyway (at least this is what I tell myself).

I'm growing a garden of stirrups

That said, I have never found the appeal of spending many dollars on itty bitty pieces of metal that will just hang from my saddles. They're barely seen. I mean, I already made the saddle... so go big or go home, right? Right?

Note from Grace: These are the cast irons I
use from Horsing Around UK

I've been using this method of stirrup making pretty much since I first started making saddles for the stirrups to hang from. It works well, and I've learned to make them in batches of 10 or so pairs so I can feel surprised when they're already there and ready for me. (It's the little things.)

You'll need:

• Tin Snips
• Some nice thick-ish wire. I use the green botanical stuff from Michael's 
• Needle Nose Pliers
• Scrap Leather (any color) 
• Silver Paint
• Some Color Paint
• Scissors
• A saddle/horse (optional - for figuring out stirrup size) 
• Silver Sharpie (optional... kind of)

I start off by cutting off a good length of wire. Better to waste a little than find out your piece is too short in the middle of a stirrup.

Take those handy needle-nose guys and grab the wire so that theres some on either side. 

After doing this enough I was smart enough to sharpie-and-clear-nailpolish a mark on the pliers so I would always get the same sized stirrups. I highly recommend doing this once you find the place on the pliers that gives you the right size. (up until then it's just trial and error) 

Fold the short piece of the wire over the top of the pliers like so:

And then take the longer piece and stick it straight up along the side of the pliers.

Next, use your thumb nail or tweezers to fold over the long piece not quite against the pliers but so that it makes a little loop over the top of the short wire piece. 

Here's a handy diagram:

Next you'll fold the short tail across the flat inside part of the pliers and squish it flat...

And then repeat with the long part of wire.

Another handy diagram:

In reality the two short pieces across the bottom will be next
to each other, I drew it like this so you could see both easier

Wiggle it off the pliers, clip off the extra short end, and tada! The skeleton of a stirrup is there! I always leave the long side attached until the end so I can paint/glue things without touching the actual stirrup. 

This is where, if you haven't found the perfect size of stirrup yet, you can compare next to a saddle or horse. 

If it looks all good, you can add some silver paint. Go ahead and apply it pretty thick and in a few layers. This helps to "seal" the little valleys between the wires, and make the top where the leather will thread through more realistic by closing up some of the extra space. 

Keep something squishy nearby to stick the stirrup into to dry after painting it. 

Notice how I made the top loop bit a little
smaller with the paint

Next, take that scrap leather and cut a little rectangle big enough to fit snuggly inside the stirrup, but not so big it rides up the sides. (I guarantee you'll get it wrong and have to fix it. I have never gotten it perfect on the first try and if you do it's probably through dark magic or something.)

Using super glue or regular tacky glue, stick it to the inside bottom of painted and dry stirrup. I prefer super glue because my interest in any given thing is about as long as it takes super glue to dry, which means if I don't use it here I'll most likely put the stirrup and glue down to dry and never pick it up again. But, if you have a fear of moving too fast or commitment in general, tacky glue is the way to go. (Tell that to the next person you date: "I'm sorry but I feel like I really just need to be tacky glue with you right now")

Anyway, after that you're free to paint the little grip pad whatever color you like! White and black are traditional of course, but because this stirrup is only for the tutorial and I'm an adult and can do as I please I've gone with red for the holidays! 

Classy!

This is where a silver sharpie really comes in handy. Undoubtedly you will mess up the colored paint just a little, and instead of going back and forth between accidentally putting silver on color and color back on the silver as you try to fix it, you can just take a silver sharpie and gently poke it over where you messed up with color. Easy peasy! 

Finally, just trim off the long tail and silver-sharpie the green tip. 

Done!! I love these guys because a) I don't have to wait for shipping ever and b) the cost of all the wire and paint and leather I bought that can make hundreds of them probably cost as much as two pairs of the cast guys.

Let me know if you try it and this method works for you! I hope it will help some people like me who refuse to buy certain things. I'd love to see what you guys make!

Grace again: I'll pass along any comments or questions you guys might have right to Anna! And be sure to check out her blog and Facebook page if you haven't already.

Blogidays Day Five: The Other Cool People

Continuing down memory lane/slow news day... 

If some of the pictures seem random, that's because they are. Nothing got done in the studio today and I don't really have any relevant pictures to go with some parts of this post, so enjoy some random pictures from the past two years or so, just purged from my ancient phone.  

Over on the right side of the blog you've probably noticed a little list of links titled "Other Cool People." Those aren't just interesting blogs- each link has earned its way there and has little anecdotes behind it. So let's spread some love, shall we?

Ebb & Flow Studios

Anna. I feel like I talk about Anna almost every single blog post, but she's worth it. Hands-down my favorite human, partner in crime, and talented tackmaker to boot. I could wax on about her forever, but I'm going to leave it at that because I'm sure I'll be doing plenty more loving on her in the future.

Braymere Custom Saddlery

I know I'm not alone when I say that Jennifer Buxton is the one who inspired me to start blogging in the first place. I can't even remember how I first stumbled upon her blog some five years ago, but as soon as I did I was struck by how clean, visually appealing and genuinely interesting her posts are. A visit to Braymere is as much a part of my daily routine as mealtimes are, and I'm never disappointed.

The first full mini tack set I ever sent out into the world,
with some A+ phone photography.

After reading the blog for about a year, I figured it was high time to get myself some materials and start making tack. With some vinyl found at JoAnn's and a bottle of superglue, I pieced together a Classic scale English saddle, complete with paper clip stirrups. My heart is not broken over the fact that this monstrosity has somehow disappeared since...

Beyond her essential Tack Tips, I don't think there are many performance documentation sheets I've ever made without at least one of her gorgeous pictures. Her blog has been an invaluable resource to me as a performance shower because she makes it easy to bridge the gap between model horses and live ones.

The start of a time-sucking project earlier this week...

Her Tack and Performance Reference Indexes are bookmarked on my laptop- I know I can count on her clear, high-quality pictures to be a better tack reference than digging through Google Images.

On the blogging front, as soon as Jennifer added this blog to her sideroll, my traffic just about doubled, and I know a lot of people stay updated on what's going on here by monitoring my blog's icon on Braymere. I love being interconnected like this, and am still honored that I'm mentioned in the company of such wonderful other blogs!

Dreamflite Design

While Braymere inspired me to try tack, it was Anna Kirby's work that made me think that mini scales might be fun. Anna (Yager) and I fangirled over her blog and her website, at first in the "Who would ever want to make tack that small? That's insane!" kind of way, then slowly into the "I wonder if we could do that?" kind of way.

One of Leah Koerper's amazing entries at Sweet Onion Live earlier this year.

At the time, the only other mini tackmaker we were really aware of was Becky Yeager, who had some really amazing stuff out there too. Dreamflite was really the push in the right direction we needed. We took it as a very serious sign from the universe that if you combined these two artist's names, you could come up with Anna Yeager- which is one letter away from a perfect match. Clearly this was supposed to happen.

One of my favorite carriage horses working the downtown Seattle route.

By the time I'd decided to try making Stablemate tack, I'd read the entirety of her blog and spent hours just staring at the work she had posted on her website. Seeing the tack in this scale, and reading about how she did it, made it seem so easy. As yesterday's post attested, a lot of the methods I use to this day are inspired by her.

Shoestring Stable

I discovered Leah Koerper's blog shortly after my mini tack adventure began, and I quickly became very attached. While Anna Kirby's tack seemed almost unreal, Leah's tack and customs were presented in a way that felt a lot more relatable to me. Her entire Tips and Tricks tag is a thing of beauty.

The rider! The horse! Gimme!

Shoestring is another blog that really inspired me to get things done, because Leah just makes customizing look so easy! I still go back through her pastelling posts to get myself pumped when I have a horse to color. 

Leah is a fellow Region 1-er, and I briefly ran into her at Sweet Onion Live earlier this year. While I was a bit too scatter-brained, busy, and generally shy to really have a solid conversation with her, I did get a chance to sneak a few peeks at her absolutely amazing mini entries. I'm so jealous of her riders!

Five Paws Studio

I've never met or talked to Kristian, but hers is another blog that I've found myself becoming attached to. We have similar interests (inside and outside the hobby), so a new Five Paws post is always fun for me. Her current zombie horse is especially reminiscent for me of my past customizing adventures...

Kristian also took notice of this blog and linked to it on Five Paws before anyone else seemed too interested. The traffic she directed my way was huge for me- it felt like actual people were really reading my stuff!

Desktop Stables

There's something about making tiny versions of normal-sized things that's just so delightful, and I find a lot of that delight through Desktop Stables. Nichelle's blog is always visually amazing (I love how her header changes with the seasons!), and her miniatures are to die for. She recently made a bunch of Traditional scale western saddle pads that just absolutely knocked my socks off. 

Leah's jaw-dropping micro mini flat racing entry- how, Leah???

CK Tiny Tack

Christina Brown is quite possibly proof of magic. That, or she has a shrink ray that she's hogging all to herself, because I really struggle to picture any of her tack as starting out as just leather and materials. Her tack is a huge inspiration to me, and a standard that I hope I'll one day achieve!

My new reindeer slippers currently snuggling my feet.

And those are my Cool People! There are a few people I know I'm leaving off, but these are the people I feel most connected to or inspired by. 

I guess the last person I need to mention is collectively all of you, the people who read this here blog- all of your comments and even your views make me feel like I'm going in the right direction! Thank you so much to the commenters and silent readers alike. I know you're out there, and I appreciate you.

Back to real-time tack tomorrow, I promise! Another week of Blogidays to come- the question still stands, anything you'd really like to see? Tutorials? Performance thoughts? I promise we're done with memory lane. For now. :)

GOAT.

YOU GUYS.

The holiday raffle is still just getting started, and we already have enough raised to buy a family in a developing nation a goat. This is beyond exciting- the impact that you guys are making is only going to grow from here!

At this rate, would could potentially provide a month of healthy lunches for a school, or even direly needed clean water for a family for life. For life! 

I know you've already been hit over the head with pictures of the raffle sets, but just hang with me for a little while longer. Today Anna's incredible set arrived here (easier to have them both ship from the same place), and I haven't stopped ogling it since. My camera can't even pick up on the tooling, but the silver in particular is spectacular. 

Just one more photoshoot in the snow tomorrow with both sets, then I promise I'll lay off the raffle pics. 

Speaking of holiday events, I thought it'd be fun to try and post here every single day in December until Christmas Eve, partly to motivate me to get through the orders I'm working on and partly to continue promoting the raffle. I imagine a lot of the posts will just be studio update/"what I did today" types, but I'd love to write some tutorials or more in depth posts, if you guys have any topics you'd like me to cover?

Let me know in the comments!

Holiday Raffle!

I am so, so excited to finally announce this!

My best friend Anna Yager of Ebb & Flow Studios and I have been quietly working away for the past two months on two complete tack sets, aside from our sales and commission work. We're thrilled to let them see the light of day at last, as the prizes in a holiday raffle!

From now until December 25th, we'll be selling raffle tickets for just $1 a pop (less if you buy more- more details in a minute) for your chance to be one of the two recipients of these sets.

What we're most excited about, is how 100% of the money we raise will go straight into a donation for the charity Free the Children.

FTC's Core Values

Free the Children is an amazing organization which advocates for local and international change by way of empowering young people. Self-described:

"An international charity and educational partner, Free The Children believes in a world where all young people are free to achieve their fullest potential as agents of change. We work to empower youth to remove barriers that prevent them from being active local and global citizens."

I personally love Free the Children because it doesn't just talk about getting stuff done; it gets stuff done. Their impacts in developing nations include new schools built and ran in areas that direly needed them, the empowerment of women with self-sufficient economics, clean water to over a million people, sanitation and health services internationally, and much more.

 

Over the summer, Anna teamed up with Free the Children's travel organization Me to We and jetted off to Kenya to spend three weeks helping to build a dormitory for a girl's secondary school.

Anna and I are both absolute holiday nuts that just relish in this time of year, and we feel like it's only right to try and use the skills and hobby we have to help someone else who needs it.

So our goal is to raise $50 from raffle tickets to be able to buy a family in a developing nation a goat, which provides them with not only a source of nutritious milk but also a sustainable income, which can be life-changing.

(Of course we can adjust our donation gift to fit however many funds we raise- there's never a donation too small or too large).

The tack sets up for grabs are one western pleasure set by Anna, and one hunter/general English set by me. The western set is a deep brown, with gorgeous vine & flower tooling and silver stamping. The one ear bridle has snazzy western buckles and classy silver beads. Comes with two appropriately holiday colored pads, one red and one green.

The English set is a pretty dark brown color, and includes a basic hunter saddle, contour girth, snaffle bridle complete with faux tongue buckles and laced reins, and two pads: one basic white fitted, and one green square.

Both sets are made for the G4 Driving mold (pictured), but the saddles will fit other molds with similarly sized barrels.

Now that you've been thoroughly hit with pictures of the sets, and have an idea of where the ticket money is headed, here's the nitty gritty:

• Ticket prices:
• 1 for $1
• 6 for $5
• 12 for $10
• 25 for $20
• (Email me if you're interested in more than 25 tickets, and we'll work out a price!)
• Each ticket counts as one entry and will be assigned a unique number based on the order we receive payments.
• For example, if the first person to enter buys 6 tickets, they have tickets number 1 through 6. Then if the second person buys three, they have tickets 7 through 9, and so on. (I'll be keeping a running list to keep track of which numbers belong to whom.)
• We'll use a random number generator to pick two numbers between 1 and the total number of tickets sold between now and December 24th. 
• I'll post a screen shot of each number being picked and post it here when I announce the winners!
• The first number drawn will be the first winner and will get first pick of which set they would like, and the second number drawn will get whichever set the first winner didn't pick. 
• All ticket sales will count as entries between now and December 24th at 11:59pm (USA Pacific Time).
• Paypal is the only method of payment we're accepting for ticket sales, and make sure you designate the payment as a donation/gift! I realize that not everyone has a Paypal and I apologize if this is a disappointment for you!
• The winners will be picked on December 25th, and announced here and on Anna's blog, along with screen caps of the random numbers generated. A screen cap of the donation receipt from Free the Children will be posted by the 27th. 
• Shipping to the winners is on me. 

How to enter:

1. Email me at stageleftstudioss@gmail.com with the following filled out:

Name:

Number of tickets:

Shipping address:

(Letting me know your shipping address when you're entering is totally optional- I'd love to send every entrant a little thank-you in the mail, but if you'd rather not provide it, no problem! Of course, if you end up winning, you can always get me your address at that point.)

I should get back to you promptly letting you know your payment total for the number of tickets you've selected, and directing you to the Paypal address you should send your payment to. 

2. Send your payment to that address. Remember to send it as a donation/gift!

3. Your part is done! I'll get back to you again letting you know when your payment is received, confirming your entry, and giving you your ticket numbers. 

I know that's a whole lot of information to absorb- if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to comment or shoot me an email! 

This is a fun win-win-win for everyone involved- we got to make some tack, you could win said tack for $1, and all the money is going where it can really help make a difference. 

Also, I get to take pictures with itty-bitty Christmas decorations, which is incentive enough for me.

Thank you in advance to anyone who enters, and here's to a great upcoming holiday season!