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!

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!

Raffle Winners!

Okay everyone, for the past few weeks I have been recording the author every comment left and assigning each and every comment a number.

I then asked random.org for two random numbers between 1 and 268...

The first winner is comment #260, Celia for the comment: "That saddle is amazing! I love the panels." on For Me?!

And the second is comment #35, MyPony Bay for the comment: "That tack is absolutely stunning!" on Goo Goo Goo Joob

Winners, please shoot me an email (stageleftstudioss@gmail.com) letting me know you've seen this so we can work out halter choices and shipping details.

Everyone else, thank you so much for leaving such lovely comments! I've had such a blast reading them all- I wish I could make something for every single one of you. I hope you'll stick around to see what else I have in store for the future.

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!