It's been a bit of a rough start to the year here, we had some issues with Mum and her yard, and the we lost one of our lovely rabbits unexpectedly, this more or less coincided with the other rabbit being ill and needing vet treatment (the two issues were unrelated, Hattie the older doe was eleven, and it was a heart attack that got the poor girl) then needing to get another doe for Bramble as he was pining on top of his existing medical condition....so anyway the point of this is I found a bit of an outlet in making things. As usual they were Tye related and as usual also horse related.
Some good news tho - this pic was entered in a yearly Christmas themed competition and won!! I'm awaiting the prize in the post and will be uploading pix as soon as it arrives.
Those with sharp eyes will see that it's one of the pix from the last photo story, I created the story once this pic was taken just because a) its fun and b) the time that goes into making anything and building the sets means I like to get as much out of it as I can so a nice story usually presents itself, and they snowball (just WAIT till I finally get the planned summer one off the ground, it's had to be postponed for two years, third time lucky?)
Anyway with the same idea another forum is running a photo competition, just a fun thing, I'll put more details later and also the pic I entered, which I'm pretty happy with although again the camera and light were not cooperating lol. In the meantime I want to share a pic that I thought was fun. I had to make another set of tack for another pony that Tye was riding, a julip Pit Pony who is technically a shetland in the grand scheme of model horse scales and types. He needed a set of racing tack and since my background in model horse showing (look it up - in fact go look up 'model horse tack' and be wowed) I wanted it nice and realistic - cue hitch one. The kids often ride in peacock safety stirrups, these are regular english metal irons that have a rubber band arrangement on one side instead of the regular solid metal, the idea being that if kid and pony part company the rubber band will slip off the keeper and release the kids foot negating any danger of being dragged, something riders dread.
I needed a set for Tye, i also needed to remember how they worked lol - I haven't used the things in so long for real horse riding.
I found my original stirrups which we'd used on our little mare more recently when a small child wanted to ride her. Managed to make some miniature ones with fimo of all things., and took this rather messy shot of the two for comparison, the real stirrup would fit a small child up to say about five or six.
Anyway here's a closer shot of the stirrups
The stirrups have black treads which in real life are made of rubber (the real one in the pic has them) Thats a pair of snaffle bit rings next to the stirrups, Taffy (the pony) had a perfectly good bridle but it was so old it disintegrated when I tried to adjust it, hence the entire tack remake. Here he is with his older bridle, and Tye in half of her Jockey outfit.
Scuse the roughness of the pix, they['re the ones taken on the phone camera to send to a friend.
That might be why some come out smaller than others too, I have no control over that. The images are edited on the phone and I have no idea how they'll come out when they get to the site!
Before christmas I was also making a ton of stable accessories for a couple of friends - Ruth and Sam at Ruthandfriends, and another friend from a model horse forum. Somewhere on my online travels I found a tutorial for making grooming brushes and was dying to try it out!
Here's the results, all made from Fimo and various cheap craft paintbrushes.
I was so pleased with these! The various tools are a selection of brushes that you use to take care of a pony. the odd thing bottom left of the box is a hoof pick and brush integrated into one, I don't use that sort (its a bit unwieldy in real life) a metal curry comb (on the right) cleans the hair out of the brushes, and the odd looking thing in the middle is a plastic curry comb that you get mud off the horse's coat with. Never use the metal one on the horse, just on the brushes.
Here's a shot of them half made. that's a whole load of brush backs which have been made out of fimo, shaped. cooked and are awaiting the bristles being added, the curvy thing to the right is a wobbly looking sweat scraper - you use it to get water out of the coat, or at least make a start on it on a real horse. The two metal curry combs are at the back. The thing you can just see top right is a brush that went spectacularly wrong (you're meant to be able to use toothbrush bristles to make quite tough dandy brushes, a robust tough brush that gets mud out of a coat) well I could NOT get it to work, but Fran suggested adding 'hair' to it and calling it a 'used brush' - tried it with cat and rabbit hair cut down and woot - I'll have to get a pic of it close up at some point to share. The brush backs closer to the camera are meant to be the fancy wooden ones that cost a bomb but put a lovely shine on a summer coat, the blue one to the right is meant to be a coloured brush that is far more useful for getting winter mud off, the curvy one in the middle is a flick brush that's a recent invention, it has longer bristles and you 'flick' it off the coat at the end of the stroke to flick the grime away. it's REALLY handy for getting ground in dirt out.
I then started on a couple of other necessary things, all this lot were going for xmas presents and I spent most of December in a frenzy of 'making'
First a set of tools for clearing muck out of a field, a necessary but annoying task.
The rake went a bit wobbly but it kinda worked. Then there was something I was really proud of and this was without any form of tutorial (so were the poo picking tools)
This is a yard hose and attachments, made from the plastic wire you get between earplugs in industrial sites - I kept seeing them around at work and figured there had to be a use - was right!
Finally a pair of animal feeding and water bowls, I had a julip cat to send to Sam and wanted to send food and bowls for her too, they didn't quite work as neatly as I'd hoped but I was pretty happy with them!
EDIT - found a pic of the 'used' brush along with other half made things
That is - it's been a productive couple of months!
Thanks for reading
Sue (and Tye)