Parade tack

I have been working feverishly on my parade tack.  Almost nonstop for the last three or four days.. I want to get it to a point to where the big things like designing and "editing" are well behind me.. and I'm almost there.  On Friday I discovered that while I had THREE bottles of dark brown dye, I had NO black.  My parade set is going to be two toned so not having black was a "big deal".  Saturday I was able to make it to Tandy leather and Get some black dye so I'm all set.  I then accidentally dyed some of the pieces too lightly so those pieces had to be redone and redyed.

I really would like to take the time to make everything myself out of silver but I really need to fly in making this so I'm using some pre-made hummingbirds from fire mountain gems.  I'm trying to figure out how to get some color on them instead of just leaving them all silver.. but i do like the silver against the black and dark brown.  It's harder NOT to use real silver than to use found objects and tape for me.. lol!

Anyway, photos when this thing looks like it's supposed to.. and I have to figure out how to make a decent corona pad for it considering it's shape..