Finished Western Show halter!

Here are the pictures of the Completed Halter. I'll be having a lottery for buying it. It's price is $170.00ppd and I'll start taking names on December 1st at noon and go till December 2 at noon (Eastern Time). More Details on December 1st!

Scale

I have some new folks visiting from the "SITS" blog and I want to show them the scale of my work. So forgive me if this isn't very interesting to folks that already are in my hobby or already know about miniatures.

Above is a halter that I finished recently that is compared to an American Quarter. Underneath it is a catalog page from Sergeants Western Wear catalog showing a real "life sized" halter so that you can get the feeling of what I'm making.

My work is 1/8th of life size scale. Doll House folks work in 1/12th scale. I'm not sure how that translates to the Railroading folks or I'd compare my scale to them as well.

The next braided bridle that I'll be working in will be in 1/6th scale which is quite a bit bigger than my regular scale. (about the size of a barbie horse or a johnny west "thunderbolt" horse)

My "how to" article mentioned in the last blog post will be about dying a 3/32nds piece of leather lacing. I actually get asked how I do that quite a bit and it's not quite as easy as it sounds. I've taken pictures and everything :-)..

I Promise..

I've been reading a whole lot of blogs lately. Not just miniaturist blogs, but blogs of all kinds. I must be nuts but I'm thinking about doing a "How I do this" kind of post in the near future. So I promise to do one. I have no clue what I'm going to show folks but I'll think of something.

I also read back through my other blog posts and they're pretty boring. I'll try to liven it up around here a bit.

I'm seriously exhausted today. boy decided that he didn't want to sleep past 4:45am so I heard him in the monitor at that time, and at 5 am.. and every 15 minutes afterwards. (as he did yesterday morning as well..) So I'm not going to be informative or interesting today but I promise it's coming soon......... :-)

Inspirational and humbling

Please visit Morgan Kilbourne's blog today. She has Published a link to a video of a Miniature Artist that is astounding. In fact, his work has become very inspirational and has my mind reeling!

Also, I'm very close to finishing the Blue and White Western Show Halter mentioned in my previous post. I don't know when I'm going to get time to completely finish it up because of the upcoming holiday (I have to clean and cook!) but I'm hoping to be done with it by December 1st! Wish me luck!

Sneaky peeky!

Above are Sneak peeks of halters I have in progress. The blue and white one was made for a Peter Stone Ideal Quarter Horse and is 1/8th Scale. The Red and Black one was also made for a Peter Stone Ideal Quarter Horse and is also 1/8th Scale. Both will be for sale when they are finished. I'm hoping like mad that I'll that I'll have them done by January 2009 at the latest.

The blue one will be lotteried off to my yahoo group and the red one will be first come first served. They're both going to be $170 postage paid.

whirling, blur of a mess...

No, not my studio (well, yeah, my studio too) but my brain. This weekend I got jack NOTHING accomplished despite my best efforts. Saturday morning, at 4am munchkin's diaper leaked so the poor thing started to cry and woke us. It was my turn to get up with him (I let hubby sleep late on Saturdays since he gets up with munchkin throughout the week) so I jolted awake and bounded up the stairs as fast as I could to see what was going on..

Because of this, I ingested LARGE amounts of caffeine to wake up which sent my brain into overdrive. I was able to get some time in the studio but I couldn't focus for anything because my brain was whirring too fast.

Yesterday was spent going to my parents with munchkin and going out to eat so (Marimbas in Shelbyville!!!!!) I didn't have a lot of productive time in the studio.

I need to engrave some keepers for a woven knot western show halter but I can only work in the studio when munchkin sleeps. My engraver is UBER noisy so I can only engrave when my husband is home, and feeling generous about giving me time to engrave. We have a basement but it is currently unfinished, although I guess I could go down there to engrave and munchkin wouldn't wake up..hmmmmm........... That's a thought.. I could eye the treadmill and guilt myself into getting on it too..hahaha

Yesterday during my brief time while munchkin slept I looked on youtube to see if anyone had put up some silversmithing videos. I was richly rewarded and I now have some more ideas about how to make my tiny silver bits more 3-d. I know that I could just sculpt the buggars and then cast them, but casting costs more money than just hacking them out of silver one at a time. Hopefully, eventually, I will make the bits more uniform and maybe I will be able to cast them. Right now the "process" is very hit or miss so I'll just keep them to myself.

Above is the "silver graveyard" - a collection of stuff that has been pulled off of finished pieces or never passed the muster to be used on pieces I was working on. I am still very proud of the tiny silver oak leaves. They taught me a lot about how silver works, or doesn't :-)

I have a harder gauge of silver on it's way from Rio Grande (not rio rondo). Heather Downing mentioned when I saw her at Breyerfest that she felt that my bits were bit flimsy. Although I disagree with that to some extent, (because you don't need a lot of weight to control a model horse <G>I decided to test the waters with some 28 gauge silver to see if I liked working on that better. I think it may hold more detail than the thinner gauges.

We shall see, and I promise to whine about it on my blog! YIPPEEE!

It's Finished! The Californio Style Mother Hubbard II set

It only took a year and 10 months! And it is already sold! :-)

Next up is a bit of a departure - a 1/6th scale braided bridle. And I've started working on a woven western show halter in 1/8th scale that I'll be offering to my yahoo group whenever it's finished.

sooooooooooo close...............

I am so close to finishing up the cinch for my mother hubbard II saddle. I think just a couple of more hours and I should be finished... I am still trying to figure out a way to do more on the cinch but I just don't have a lot of room to work with.

After I'm done, I'm going to clean. My studio is a TOTAL mess from when I was pregnant and couldn't do a lot. I just brought the magazines upstairs and put em on the floor. LAST Year's Breyerfest models are STILL in the studio waiting to be un strapped from their boxes... and my catalogs and reference all need to be organized.

Above are photos of the chaos......

Then it's onto braided bridles!!! I'm thinking about a silver snaffle braided bridle in blue or green.......

LIGHT!

As of today, I think I have a plan for the cinch! It isn't as fancy as I had wanted it but it will definitely be appropriate! Now to carve out time to work on it and finish it!

My next project will be a braided bridle or two. I really have a strong desire to do more of them.

Happy Voting Day!

I won't attempt to "wax poetical" about how lucky we are that we can vote in this country. I'm sure that everyone knows that voting is a great privledge not afforded to everyone in the world so we should feel lucky and "blessed" that we can decide our leaders this way.





Please, be nice to the poll workers and everyone in line with you. Please resist the urge to stab the person spouting off about the candidate that you hate with a pen. :-) Please resist the urge to tear the opposing candidates bumper sticker off of the cars around yours. If you can't play nice then you can still play but it would be more pleasant if you're not psychotic about it :-)




Above is a patriotic picture of the arabian stallion "Good Thunder". "Good Thunder" is a champion in many disciplines (native costume, saddleseat and more!) and at the final Arabian Horse Nationals held in Louisville, Ky in 2006, he carried the American Flag on Friday and Saturday Nights.




My apologies for the all of the "noise" in the picture, I was using my old Point and Shoot Camera. (only 5 megapixels as opposed to the EOS Rebel that I use now which is 10) The noise reducing plugin that I use "Noise Ninja" only made the grain worse so I left it as is.


Supposedly there will be at least a 2 hour wait to vote around here today. My husband is going to come home early so that I can go vote without toting munchkin along. I would imagine that 2 hours in a line would be torture for a 10 month old! I wonder if I still have my old "Game boy"......