Studio Update: January 18

The craziness continues. 

This week has been primarily about prop making, with some pretty dull tack prep work thrown in. 

The second doll from the last post cleaned up rather nicely, albeit slowly...

...And is currently midway through painting. Pink hair on a hunt seat rider? I think yes. 

The two most ambitious projects I'm currently chipping away at are nothing alike, but equally fun to be attempting. The first is for an order, a surcingle set for a gorgeous CM'd horse in the capriole:

Hopefully this will come out really cool, but it's currently just a bunch of black lace. This definitely feels like a project that takes a long time to prep, but that will hopefully really benefit from it later!

As for the other challenge...

via

A stadium jump for my CM G3 jumper! Naturally, colorful standards and striped poles would just be too easy. I thought a 1:32 scale version of this fence from the World Equestrian Games in Normandy would be a much better choice.

via

Braymere featured a guest post by Terri Wright a little while back with some more fantastic pictures of this guy- I'm sure other hobbyists have already given this jump a whack, but maybe not in this scale? I just adore the whimsical design. 

Now, I am not a master sculptor by any stretch of the imagination, and hands are hard to start with. For a while, I noodled on trying to go out and find a doll or some kind of decoration that had the right size hand, but the likelihood of finding a hand in the correct size and the correct position just seemed a little far-fetched. 

Out came the clay.

I now have the rough beginnings of a hand, and a pretty solid little palette with some fun paint smears. Fingers crossed this will turn out!

And finally, some less exciting projects:

A hunter jump with some experimentation with greenery and "AstroTurf" poles..

...and the beginnings of a saddle for this guy to wear while he sails over the "paint brushes."

Studio Update: January 11

This week has been all over the place.

I've entered this weird, transitional phase of studio life, thanks to my decision to attend two back-to-back performance shows in March. So in addition to the current orders I'm working on, I have a lot of work to do for myself to try and get a head start on improving my performance entries, rather than waiting until the week before the shows and throwing everything together (which I've definitely never done before...). 

Naturally, now that I have so much legitimate work to get done, I decided it was time to try micro scale tack. 

That adventure lasted about an hour, before I decided that micro is way, way too small for me. However, it sure made Stablemate tack seem large and manageable!

I also...

...realized it's high time to order new stirrups, and apparently make a side saddle!

At Sweet Onion Live last summer, I drooled over Leah Koerper's incredible mini scale dolls, and resolved to one day have little riders of my own. This has been quite the adventure. 

First, I decided to give a whack at just sculpting a doll entirely from scratch...

...but sculpting is hard, and I was really frustrated with her leg-to-saddle ratio. I'm keeping her around, but I think if I'm going to go that route, I either need to make her larger or make a smaller saddle to fit her. Ugh.

Frustrated with that, I took a hacksaw to one of my plastic dolls and tried to alter her into the kind of position I'm going for. She's really, really rough right now, but I think this is headed in the right direction?

Her arms need a lot of help!

With all this work on dolls, though, I'm feeling torn: On one hand, I think a doll could really help my performance entries look more complete and put-together, and give them an extra edge they need. On the other hand, I'm terrified of unknowingly having a doll with slightly incorrect positioning or not perfectly fitting the tack, and having it hurt my otherwise good entry. Non-articulated dolls are definitely hit-or-miss in that if there's something fundamentally wrong with her, I can't just adjust it later!

I'm totally open to constructive criticism at this point- what do you think? Keep going and adjusting her, or just leave her off altogether and play it safe?

Dutton Saddle Pics

Holy Saddle, Batman!

One of my long-standing tack dreams has been to recreate this awesome RZ Dutton saddle in Stablemate scale, and this week, it finally happened!

The inspiration...

My concept sketches

Getting that hole in the seat was a bit of a trick. 

Woo! Check that one off the tackmaking bucket list. 

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!