Parade Tack

I am admittedly very excited because I am working on a parade set.  It is being worked on inbetween waiting for tooling and dying to be dry on the reining set.  Tomorrow I should be ready to go with putting pieces back together again...

Female Ruby Throated Hummingbird- taken outside of my laundry room window

Anyway, My grand plan for a parade set most of my tackmaking career has been to make everything out of real silver and take years and years to finish it.  Considering how slow I am anyway, that didn't seem out of the realm of possibility to do.  My "revised" plan is to do one more quickly.. say in a few months..  My theme is one that is near and dear to my heart.. the hummingbird.  I've already found and ordered some charms for drops on the serape... and I've started on a saddle plan and started changing my saddle pattern.  I'm also going to use silver tape.. something that I haven't used in years but I would imagine that would lend itself towards covering the shoulders of a saddletree easier than real silver.

I'm imagining some kind of sheridian style tooling with a hummingbird motif as well as some hummingbirds on the serapes with some lovely colors.. (Inspired of course by Susan Young).

For years I've been collecting and making stuff for this "future" parade set.  I've painted a pistol bit with white on the handles to simulate pearl handles.   I've got every kind of parade reference one could possibly have including photos that I have personally taken of a possible Ted Flowers rig that was for sale at my local tack shop.  I have the photos that I took one year at breyerfest when Michelle McFarlane brought her stunning horses and tack to the Horsepark.   I have more High Noon Catalogs with parade tack in it than anyone that I personally know.. and I have the "Bohlin Book" and the book with Collectible saddles and and and and.. well really it was getting overwhelming so I had to take a step back and really think about what I wanted to do..  But now I have a clearer image in my head, including colors, and I'm very excited to get started.  

After the reining saddle is done of course..

I'm also proud to say that I've completely cleaned my studio.  Purged some stuff I was holding onto for sentimental reasons and found a bunch of stuff that I completely forgot that I owned..  I still have no idea where everything is but it looks good in there

Today, I feel better than I have in some time.  Wednesday was a "dark day" due to the meds left over in my system from Tuesday's migraine but the days got progressively better and today was a very good one.  I'm trying so hard to stay positive...  I hope that your Saturday was just as good :0)