PICTURES of the NAN Donation!

This year's theme was proposed to me by Barb Ness.. She was thinking about three kinds of performance halters that folks could have and do an "instant" showmanship package!

 

 

I settled on the color green, since it's one of my favorite colors and it's a very popular color for tack right now. Not too flashy but flashy enough to be appealing :-)

 

 

The First halter, is an all silver, adjustable arabian show halter with hand made silver conchos. It fits the Breyer Huckleberry Bey Mold and as you can see, it'll fit a Khemo resin nicely. All silver has been coated so that it doesn't tarnish, and the crystals on the halter are real swarovskis.

 

 

The next halter is a hand woven native arabian halter. This halter has wrapped tassles on each side, hand made "cowrie shells" and real silver, hand made sharks teeth. (Those of you on facebook know I've been complaining about how these suckers like to fly across the room, never to be seen again.) All silver has been coated to retard tarnishing so the sharks teeth will stay nice for you for some time to come.

 

 

The last halter is a woven knot and will have western silver plates on the side pieces and on the noseband. The buckles, and keepers on this halter are REAL Silver! And the buckles are just as sturdy as the Rio Rondo Pewter buckles. I used a heavier gague silver this time so that they could withstand some use! This halter will come with a lead and fits the Lady Phase Mold.

 

 

THank you to Barb who is giving me an extra week to get this all finished!!!

soooooooooooooooooooooooo Close!

I'm so close to done on my NAN donation! THank goodness for the long weekend! Hopefully I'll have more time in the studio each night and be able to work. RJ is no longer woken up by my dremeling which is wonderful!! I do a lot of dremel work... All will be revealed monday or tuesday of next week!

Down to the wire...

My poor Munchkin is sick again today so he stayed home from daycare. We have a dr's appt this afternoon. I hope that his ear infections haven't come back.. the poor guy.. he's teething on top of it all : /

Theser are in progress pictures of the last two halters I'm trying to finish up for my NAN Donation. THe Native halter WILL be finished, the western halter is a "hope against hope"..

Some Progress on the NAN Native Halter......

I have gotten some things done on my NAN Donation Native Halter. First of all, I've gotten it pieced together and the backing on the halter itself. I was going to use ribbon, but in the past I've had ribbon come unglued from the back of the halter. This time I used some leather lacing and that seemed to work out great!

Above, next to the dime, you'll see a tiny "sharks tooth" decoration for the halter. Yes, I'm making my own sharks teeth out of silver. I know that one can buy this stuff from Rio Rondo but I really want this halter to be made by me as much as possible. In fact thats my goal for future miniature tack. The more I make it myself, the more "authentic" I feel it becomes.

The first time I made these, I wanted to pull my hair out! I've gotten a lot more adept with the dremel since then and these aren't taking me nearly as long. The hard part is getting a hole at the top because I don't own a drill press.

I'm hoping against hope I can eek out a western show halter but it's going to be close..

I am still not getting a whole lot of sleep thanks to munchkin. Instead of sleeping for about 12 hours overnight, he only sleeps eight yet we can't get him to stay up past 7pm.
So my husband and I are definitely seriously sleep deficient..

If you haven't seen it yet, Nicanor, a full younger brother to Barbaro broke his maiden in his forth start and won by 15 lengths! Yes, I'm a sap, and I cried when I watched the video.. He had his ears up the whole way on the backstretch and was really enjoying himself on the grass! Watch it here: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/50753/barbaros-brother-nicanor-breaks-maiden-by-15

I Hope that he has a long and successful career as both a racehorse and a sire!

More Sneak Peeks

Still coming along slowly but surely. This week is a whirl wind of Drs appointments and we're going out of town so I won't have a lot of time in the studio. I plan to make next week "Studio" week so that I can get my NAN donation done..

Congratulations Mine that Bird!

http://www.horsephotos.com/watermark.jsp?photoID=99236

$9500 Maiden Claimer by Birdstone, Mine That Bird, and Jockey Calvin Borel (Bo-rail) won the Kentucky Derby Today in Fine style, going away! Congratulations to all of his connections!

Real Quick! Kentucky Oaks Video

If you haven't seen the 2009 Kentucky Oaks Video, I would highly recommend it. Rachel Alexandra won by 20 1/4th lengths. It's one of the most impressive wins I've ever seen!!

http://www.kentuckyoaks.com/2009/videos

Some progress on Kentucky Oaks Day

I actually made some progress on the native arabian halter here in Kentucky Oaks Day. Please forgive the shaky picture I didn't get a lot of sleep last night thanks to this cold so I have a lot of caffeine in my system..

Sadly Zenyatta Scratched because the track was a bit off, so we didn't get to see that brilliant filly run in one of the undercard races. I'm pulling for Rachel Alexandra in the oaks!

just a P.S.

I think I may have a few folks coming over from twitter, so I'd like to mention that I've done racing sets in minature in the past. All of the miniature racing sets that I have made were sold through the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.

The Croup

No, I'm not talking about a horse's hindquarters. I'm talking about the illness. Munchkin got the croup last week from daycare as I found out on monday when I picked him up. Friday I had take him to the Drs because he has barely slept through the night in the last three or four weeks. Turns out he was having some severe pain from teething and his gums were bleeding. Poor guy can't catch a break!

 

 

So most of this week has been spent sleeping, for all of us. We are better today and munchkin went back to daycare. This has only served to make me even farther behind on everything.

 

 

I couldn't possibly blog this week without mentioning the Kentucky Derby Festival! One of these years I'm going to make it to some of the events or more importantly, I'm going to find someone that will take me to the Derby itself in style! ( no more infield for me! LOL!!) This is such a wonderful and vibrant time here in Louisville! I LOVE derby Week.. LOVE IT!!

 

 

Ok, that said.......

 

 

Above is the Native Arabian Halter in Progress. I had to start over on the weaving because I flubbed up a piece of it on the other weaving that I had. I'm happy to say that all of the end tassels are on now and it's onto making the "doo dads" up the sides.

Wham! Wham! WHAM!

That is the sound of my head hitting my workspace. I've been banging my head against some ideas for the NAN auction Donation and I haven't gotten a lot done. I have ONE Halter done.. I thought I'd be farther along by now but life just hasn't worked out that way. We've just been terribly busy - and tired.

Knock wood, we've been healthy though!

Here are some sneak peeks of the halter that I have finished....

Finally Well!

My Whole Family is FINALLY well! thank goodness! I was able to work out every day this week so far which has been wonderful because it co-incided with the beautiful weather that we've been having here.. (allergies aside of course)

I have my first part of my North American Model Horse Nationals Donation finished! It's a silver arabian show halter with real, hand made silver conchos and a thin thin hand made silver plate across the nose. There will be a sneak peak of this on the www.namhsa.org website coming soon. :-)

Onto the next part of my donation where I will be making my own, hand made, real silver jump rings...hehehehe

Still sick!! Gack!

Unfortunately, my household is still sick! Even one of my kitties has an ailment and has to go to the vet this week, as soon as I'm feeling able. We've had the stomach flu, the regular flu, a virus and now I have completely lost my voice. (and yes, anthony is pretty happy! LOL!)

Munchkin now has a rash all over his little body from the amoxicillan that he's on.. We go back to the Drs wednesday for another checkup and hopefully they can give us some advice to give the little guy some relief!

I haven't really done anything noteworthy in the studio in the past week or so. The plates that I'm making for one of the NAN halters will be different than any of the other silver plates that I've done so far. I have a plan but it's been hard to execute it correctly. I think feeling kinda tired and sick has had something to do with that.

I've been very good about working out, even while I was sick but I think I'm going to lay off working out until I'm completely better. Working out helps with my shoulder issues (by getting the blood moving and therefore bringing down the inflammation of my shoulder) so I really can't wait until I can work out again. My shoulder has been killing me, and on top of the sinus headaches from the sinus infection, I've been in a lot of pain.

Anywho, enough whining. Above is the new bridle on my Whisper resin..

Quick Update

Last week and into this weekend and today, my family has been very sick. THe baby has a double ear infection and double pink eye that all came on very suddenly. (within 24 hours). He also had a temperature of 101F this morning. Last week my husband and I had a weird stomach flu, where we were nauseaus and lost our appetites... So it's been a trying time.

I have gotten SOME Stuff done in the studio, such as finishing up the romel reins and mentally moving forward with the halters for the NAN auction. I've got part of it designed in my head and I'll be working more dilligently on them in the coming weeks.

Above are pictures of the finished romel reins on the headstall they belong to.

Still chugging along...

I'm still chugging along on the Black romel reins I've been working on for some time now. They're about 3/4ths of the way done. Still have about 16 more knots and some other little things. Then it'll be onto a matching breastcollar and working some more on the NAN donation.

Munchkin started Daycare last week and that was very emotional. I also battled two colds this week... well three if you count Munchkin's. I've had one that came and went and then another one start that has left me exhausted. I've been going to bed at 7 or 8pm and the next thing I know, it's 4am.. So I've been really tired.

Hopefully this week will yeild some more time for me to start working on some of my own bits and buckles while munchkin is at daycare. I definitely need to do more silver etching..

Pictures will come tomorrow or the next day..