Challenge - Days 9 and 10

I completely missed Day 9 - and my first daily blog post missed this year I think.  Oh no, that's how it starts!  Soon it'll be months in between my posts!  Ha...  Okay, not so much.  (more on that at the bottom of this post)

The Copperfox Challenge for Day 9 was to plan to attend a live show or enter a photo show.

Sadly, there are no live shows here in Japan.  (I've given a bit of thought to making it one of my crazy long term goals - to possibly change that...?  but don't hold your breath for now)  I did not enter a photo show yesterday (or today) either, BUT I will "officially" announce that 2016 is the year I will return to photo showing!  You heard it here first.  ;)

The Challenge for Day 10 is to imagine a story or create characters from your model horses.

I haven't done any of that for a long time, but many of my horses were characters when I was younger.  They had profiles and personalities -  that's something I'd actually like to get back to since it was a lot of fun.

It's interesting that this day's challenge came u, because I have actually been reading over a lot of my old stories the past few days.  I have always enjoyed storytelling.  I don't have a new story, but I'll tell you about an old one.

One story that I made up when I was playing with my horses (yes, I played with them! :O haha) was about a young girl in the Old West.  She and her father had a big horse ranch and they were going to move from Texas to Montana.  Think cattle drive, only with a huge herd of horses.  I would act out scenes in my story and several of my models played as main characters.  The story was not written down, so a lot of the details have been lost, but I remember the overall story, and the horses.

"Rock Steady" was the girl's favorite horse, though he might have had a different name then.  When I got to where I was thinking up show names or registered type names for my horses, I named him Rock Steady...  after a Bryan Adams song.  (he inspired a LOT of my horse names if you haven't already noticed)

Rock Steady was a good name for him though.  In the story he was beautiful, flashy, but solid as a rock - athletic and fast, but gentle and friendly.  Everyone liked him, people and horses alike.

Sadly he is in the body herd after suffering a leg break at some time.  I don't remember it happening during the play years, oddly enough, but after.  I put a hasty splint on it just now to take that hasty picture above.  He is also fairly beat up in other ways and discolored in spots.  The life of an old west cow pony is rough..  or, since he herded horses, would he be a horse pony?  Ha!

He was one of my favorites at that time; I thought he was so gorgeous.  I don't know what my customizing plans are for him, but I'm thinking he'll still be a flashy Arab/Appaloosa in the end.


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Now, more about the missing blog post!

In all seriousness, I've found that blogging is something I do enjoy.  Some days it feels like a chore, but I do miss it if I don't do it.  I've never been very good at keeping a diary or journal and so it was with blogging for a long time.  However over the past year or so I've been doing pretty well, aiming for, and doing, daily posts most of the time.  I'm not sure I'll be able to keep that up forever (okay, no, I won't be able to...) but for me, this is fun!  On THAT note, yesterday I did happen to see that I've passed 25,000 views!

I've got a long way to go to hit where Five Paws Studio is now (over 100,000 views!) and I may NEVER reach Braymere's current total (over 3 million views and climbing!),  but I'm excited about my wee milestone.  ;)

Challenge - Day 7: Favorite Piece

Day 7 of the Copperfox 10 day Challenge is to share your favorite piece in your model horse collection.

This is a tough one.  Especially since it includes horses, and tack.

There are sentimental favorite horses, such as childhood favorite OFs, and a few of my old custom models.  I've also got new favorites too, like: Darkness Falls (classic Black Stallion), Lionesse and my Copperfox Welsh Cob.

For tack, I could say: my old duct tape tack, for fun, or my first ever "real" piece of tack: the first leather halter.  Or how about my still in progress first (leather) western saddle or fancy Arabian costume.  Ack!  There are too many choices, even just in the tack department - and I'm really only getting started there.

I have to admit though, when I first read the words: "favorite model horse", the horse that popped into my mind was this guy:

His name is Reckless, after the Bryan Adams album.  He was one of my very first custom horses.  In fact, he might have been the very first one.  I don't remember how old I was when I painted him, but I think I was around 14 or 15.      

I found the model at a flea market (along with a few other Hartlands)  At the time, I didn't even know what they were, they were cheap horse-shaped objects and that was enough for me to buy them.

I ended up giving this one a wild paint job and eventually managed to take some cool outdoor pictures of him.

He was almost always photographed from the off side, but I do have a headstudy from his near side.

He was a multi-Champion photo show horse, back in the day.  (the pictures in this post are his old show pictures)  

A few judges even sent notes back with the results, saying how "cool" he was.  Sadly my old photo show records were destroyed in the same flood that took my childhood horse books.  Some of the old pictures have water damage, but mercifully most of them survived.

I still have him.  At some point I had spruced him up a bit, adding detailed eyes, and giving him a fresh paint job, same pattern - new paint on top of it.

He was never LSQ, because I didn't know much at the time about correcting mold flaws.  Once my customizing skills had advanced, I often considered doing an overhaul of Reckless, but I could never quite bring myself to do it.  I had also thought about doing a new and improved version of him, basically his coloring (or close enough) on a better model.  Maybe I'll still do that someday...

The back of one of his old show pics.  I'm assuming it was my note for some sort of favorite model class.

"My first custom and my "baby"!"

Yeah, that about says it all.  It looks like maybe he was the first.

I do have a lot of favorites, but old Reckless has to be number one.

Challenge - Day 4: Favorite Model Horse Picture

Day 4 of the Copperfox Challenge is to post your favorite model horse picture.

I do have some old favorites but, as it turns out, I also have a new favorite - as of yesterday.

(Full story on the first ever model horse beach trip in my next post!)

Copperfox Challenge - Day 2: Name A Horse

Day two of the Copperfox Challenge is to name a model or your barn.

I've actually been throwing around ideas for a barn name, but I haven't settled on anything yet.

So, instead, I present: Copper Penny, or Copper for short.

Copperfox Challenge - Day 1: Inspiration

I just came across this:

Copperfox 10 Day Challenge

I really like the various 30 day challenges and so on that I've seen - though I've yet to take part in one.  They seem to most often be on Instagram and I'm still barely getting started over there (I'm horsetenderstudio, if anyone is curious).

This challenge from Copperfox sounds like fun.

Day 1: Inspiration should be easy for me, especially since minutes before finding out about this, I had just hauled my reference picture project into the living room to chip away at while I binge watch Heartland.

I'd have to say though that one of my biggest model horse inspirations, right off the top of my head, is Jennifer Buxton of Braymere Custom Saddlery.   She is an inspiration to me, both on the model horse front and for blogging as well. Her "tack tips" have been a massive help as I take my sporadic baby steps into the world of making "real" model horse tack - and I'm sure I'll be referring back to them quite often!

Another big inspiration, for customizing and sculpting in particular, is Rayvin Brewer of Khrysalis Studios.  Her recommendations on reference books, as well as her tips that she posts, and video tutorials, are all such a big help.

There are many, many other amazing sculptors, painters, tack and prop makers, as well as other non-hobby people who inspire me.

Thinking on it though, my biggest inspiration has to be: the horse.

My boy, Bo

A Quick Little Update

I've been chipping away at a new saddle pad over the past couple of weeks or so.  It still has a ways to go, but it's coming along.  I think this is one of the more intricate patterns that I've done.  It's a new one that I came up with, based on another real pad.

After yesterday's great unpacking debacle, a familiar face is back to modeling for halter making.  

I came close to finishing three halters today; I'm hoping I'll get them all finished tomorrow.  They will be a yellow, hot pink, and another purple one.

Another thing I'm up to is looking for some Creative Challenge ideas.  I stumbled across this one a couple of days ago and, though it appears to be geared toward photography, I'm thinking of trying to adapt the list to something crafty - particularly paper crafting.  I used to be part of a little online group that did a monthly greeting card challenge and it was fun.  Things like this help to spark creativity for me, they also help narrow the focus for a given time period when I have SO MANY IDEAS coming at me at once.  I've been thinking about setting up some sort of challenge(s) for myself as far as customizing horses too.  I'm still missing some essential supplies (like paint..), but once I get set up, I'd really like to start cranking out some horses and get back to practicing my skills there too.

Back in the Groove

I'm hard at work listing more new items at Etsy. I'm also planning to list more items in some other places - like my online store, facebook, and the two other online shops I've joined. I have an Artfire store now as well as one at a new site called efreeme. I really like some of the options that Artfire has for their listings.

Today is also the last day to submit pieces for the Harvest Creative Challenge from Etsy. With finals and the overall super hectic weekend, I slid off track with my plans for that. Yesterday was spent decompressing after the stress of the weekend and I didn't get much done other than tinkering with some new nail necklace designs.

Luckily I still have today to get some more items finished for the Challenge. I'm going to put together some paper goods items for it today - bookmarks and/or cards. I may do a dreamcatcher as well. I have plenty of earthy/harvest colors in my dreamcatcher supply stash.

I've also felt the bug nibbling - and now chomping - on me to work on some custom horses. They have been listed in my banners and on my pages as something that I make, but I haven't worked on any of them in a while. I don't know how much longer I can hold out! (haha)

It feels good to be back in the groove!

My First Items for the Creative Challenge

I completed my first two items for the Harvest Creative Challenge at Etsy. They are both the cross necklaces that I make - one in orange metallic, the other in brown metallic.

Here they are!:







I plan to make a few other things for the Challenge. I was very happy when digging through supplies yesterday to find my stash of designer papers - with autumn themes! I also found my laminator in storage (which I hadn't seen in a while) so I'm feeling some harvest-themed bookmarks coming on!

While photographing the new crosses I also took a hundred or so new pictures of other finished pieces, so we know what that means... Another photo formatting party, yaaay! (haha)

Lovely Fall Day and Studio Pics

This morning when we woke up it was only 34 degrees. Very close to a first frost, I think it's coming soon. I did another big harvest of cherry tomatoes in the garden yesterday. Hopefully I'll get in another one before the frost hits.

The house has been a little chilly this morning. With chilly bare feet and thinking I should evetually put socks on, I wandered down to the room I call the Studio (yes, THE Studio! heehee) and opened the door. This is what I was greeted with:




The room was delightfully warmer than the rest of the house, having soaked up the morning sun for the past few hours. My chilly bare feet met the sun warmed carpet and it was fantastic! Instead of retrieving whatever now forgotten item I had went in there for, I went to get my camera and started taking pictures, not wanting to leave the warmth.

Here is my desk, were much of the creation takes place:




This is part of the view out the window - our garden and a scrawny little pine tree:




And of course, my cat found some sun as well on this lovey, if a bit chilly, fall morning.



I was insipred to go throgh my supplies and see what might be useful for the Harvest Creative Challenge at Etsy. Here's what I put together so far...




Hmmmm, what will I make? So far I'm thinking one or two cards and maybe even a few bookmarks. I'm also thinking of a dreamcatcher, as any natural colors usually look lovely on them.

An Etsy Challenge!

I'm a rank beginner over at Etsy, but today I saw a post on the forum about a Creative Challenge with a Fall theme and I jumped right into the fray! Here's how it works: Everyone who accepts the Challenge has until next Tuesday, October 19th, to create a new item in Harvest colors - using only supplies that they currently have. Then list the items in their shop and provide the links in a Challenge thread. The plan is to create Etsy Treasuries with the items.

This fun event was suggested by DesignedByLucinda and so far it looks like 50 or so people have accepted the Challenge. I'm so excited, because I have been itching to do some new work and it's nice to have a theme, and a deadline. *wink* I'm thinking I'm actually going to create a few items for the Challenge - I already have some ideas!

Oh, and here are two blogs that have made posts about this Creative Challenge:

Rox & Things

The Mushroom Grove

The Mushroom Grove posted a list earlier today of the Etsy shops that had accepted the Challenge so far.

Yay!!