Halters, Halters, Halters

I haven't been to Breyerfest since 2012, and every year since, I've sat through this weekend either desperately wanting to be in Lexington or quietly relieved I'm not. This year, it's a bit of both.

I'm compensating by making like a Breyerfest attendee and making halters. They're relatively fast and fun to make, and it's given me a chance to play around with modifying Rio Rondo etched silver plates to fit this scale. So much shiny!

I have six total halters that will be up for grabs this weekend, ranging from all decked out in silver to plain ol' flat leather. For those interested, three will go up on MH$P tomorrow night at 5pm PST, and the other three will go up on Sunday night at the same time. 

(Turns out the above plan was overly ambitious for my weekend schedule- let's make it a Breyerfest week of halters instead!)

I think of halters as such a "treat yo' self" item- cheap, fun, and hassle-free! Hopefully there are others out there also beating the Breyerfest blues at home. To those attending, keep posting your pictures! I love living vicariously. 

Slow Start

I'm home for the summer and tiptoeing my way back into tack making by dusting off the studio and cobbling together some halters.

The first of which is this guy, a nice rust colored leather halter with a bronc-style noseband featuring a cool leather collage of a sunrise. Each little ray of the sun is a separate piece of slightly differently colored leather, inlayed behind the single piece of black to act as kind of a frame on a stained glass window.

The black dots along the cheek pieces are also cutouts with another layer of black leather underneath- clearly I was in an inlaying experimentation mood!

For my first piece of tack in almost a year, I'm really happy with how it came out. The buckle is permanently fixed (and has a roller, a first for me!) so all you need to do is hook and unhook the throatlatch to get it on and off. 

A sunny little piece to kick off a summer back in the studio!

This halter is up for grabs on MH$P here!

Looking forward, I think I'm going to continue with my sales pieces-only model for the summer. Which sadly means my books are staying closed to commissions, and I'll be sticking with making tack I feel inspired to make and putting it up on MH$P upon completion. As always, I'll do my best to post here with in-progress pictures, thoughts, tutorials (maybe? Anything you'd like to see?), and photos of completed works.

Halter Time

I've been in a bit of a tack making funk. 

As in, it's summer, I have free time, I'm well stocked on supplies, and yet whenever I sit down to make tack I end up finding ways of not actually getting anything done.

So I've been making halters.

I don't even know how badly people out there want halters, but they're fun to make, don't take up too much time, and make me feel good for finishing something.

I broke out the leather paint for this one, which was a fun little experiment. It came together during a binge watch of That 70's Show, and I think some kind of groovy vibe came through. 

My smallest paint brush was too clumsy, so I opted for using the tip of a sewing needle to paint. I doubt I'll be repeating this process anytime soon, but I like the end result!

I usually use a slip buckle on halters that requires actual buckling to get on and off (as in the black halter at the top of this post), but with that method I always miss the realism of the buckle's tongue. At the same time, I'm not about to make anyone actually operate a tongue buckle at this scale, so I came up with a little cheat:

The buckled buckle just sticky waxes down! Any piece of Stablemate tack that doesn't require the threading of straps through buckles is a winner in my books.

(The painted halter is up for grabs on MH$P here!)

The Tack of 2014

New Year's Day is always about looking back and looking forward. So without further ado, here is the looking back portion...

My first-ever western saddle!

I'm counting HorseBot as tack because he does technically have a saddle...

The only piece of non-Stablemate tack this year. 

I think I made around fifteen tack sets this year, which is definitely a personal record. More important than the numbers, though, is my pride in myself for sticking to my resolution of slowing down and improving the quality of my tack. Seeing my 2012 saddles next to my 2014 saddles is incredibly satisfying for me, just to see how far I've come.

Enough tooting of my own horn! Looking forward to this brand new year...

Hobby Resolutions 2015

• Attend two live shows (at least!)
• Continue working through my list of waiting orders (secretly, I'm hoping I'll be able to start averaging one order a month, but I don't want to officially resolve to that, because who knows what 2015 has in store for me!)
• Make a full polo set
• Sketch more
• Make a Traditional scale saddle
• Expand my mini halter show string (OF and CM)
• Limit/entirely cut out any Traditional model purchases
• Make a really unusual tack set (I'm thinking Lord of the Rings something?)
• Keep the blog updated

I'm so excited to get started! Do you guys have any hobby resolutions? 

Here's to 2015!

Blogidays Day Ten: Halter Raffle Follow-Up

Earlier this week, I got my most favorite kind of email: one with pictures of my tack in its new home!

Angelique received her raffle halter this week, and was kind enough to send me some stunning pictures.

First of all, that's just such a gorgeous horse. Second of all, am I the only one getting a serious ethereal feel from theses pictures? Love it!

So soft and glow-y. Thank you so much Angelique! I hope you enjoy!

This is seems like a good time to remind any of you out there with my tack that I love, love, love getting pictures of my tack on your horses, whether at a show, in your home, or even on a tiny saddle rack. It's fun to really see that it doesn't just ship off in the mail and evaporate! 

Shiny Part Two

One of the winners of the halter raffle was kind enough to send me some pics of her new halter on her model, and I just had to share!

How cute does it look?!

And the little handler, too! 

Few things make me as happy as receiving pics of my tack in their new homes- thank you so much Celia!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope your day is more treats than tricks. 

I'm still reading and enjoying all your comments, keep 'em coming! You have a little over a week to get as many comments in as your heart desires- the more comments you leave, the higher chance you have of winning one of the halters.

I know it's been a little quiet around here, but I've been busy with some exciting projects that I can't wait to share with you all! Look for another update tonight.

Shiny

Finished the stock halter!

It was weird, working with kangaroo lace again. I've been using skiver-lace exclusively this whole year, and the two different leathers are definitely different beasts. 

Anyway, this baby is shiny black leather with even shinier silver accents- definitely a flashy one! It features two ornate silver tongue buckles (both faux- one is fixed and the other sticky waxes down to the crownpiece for easy on and off), a rolled throatlach and lotsa bling. 

I'm working on a chain/leather lead to go with, but I thought I'd share what I have! For your chance to win this baby or the dark brown stable halter in my previous post, just leave a comment on any of my blog posts.

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!

Halter Raffle!

As promised, I am now officially kicking off my first-ever blog raffle!

The winners will get to choose between this lovely leather stable halter, and a fancy silver stock-type halter.

I haven't made halters in a long time, and probably won't be making more anytime soon after these guys, so this is a unique opportunity! The stable halter came out great- it has a raised noseband, faux tongue buckle, working hook on the rolled throatlach, and removable cotton lead. Made out of a lovely dark brown shade leather, with gold hardware, for the G3 Quarter Horse. 

The stock halter isn't half-bad, either:

It's a shiny black leather with shinier silver plating, complete with faux tongue buckles (simply sticky wax the right one down to the crownpiece and you're good to go) and a chain/leather removable lead. Made for the G4 Paradressage mold.

Okay, here's how this is going to work:

• One comment, on any of my blog posts, new or old, equals one entry. 
• Comment using your Google profile, or by using a nickname- if you go with the second option, make sure you're consistent!
• Comment on as many posts as you like, but only one comment per person per post! (One person leaving fifteen comments on the same post will count as one entry for that person.)
• Every entry will be assigned a number, and a randomizer will select the two winners. The first winner gets first pick of which halter they'd like, and the second winner receives whichever they didn't pick. In the event that the same person is drawn twice, I'll redraw until there are two winners. 
• All comments left before 7:00pm (USA Pacific time) on November 10th will count as entries, and winners will be chosen and announced here shortly afterward. 
• Shipping to the winners is free!

If you have any questions or I haven't covered something, let me know in the comments. 

Good luck, and thank you in advance for entering!