Coming Soon: Paint Kits and NaMoPaiMo

NaMoPaiMo is coming - and so are my paint kits!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I’ve been a participant in NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month) since the beginning and every year there are many first time painters who join in - which is amazing!!

Despite what some might say, you do NOT need expensive materials to create art. Most especially not to participate in NaMoPaiMo. I have been wanting to share my methods of painting and what better time than the Year of the Horse?

I paint exclusively in craft acrylics. Yep, the cheap stuff. In a rare example of tooting my own horn: my work has won many awards in live showing. Lots of NAN cards and even some championships. I say that just to say that, yes, craft acrylics can make some cool stuff! There are also other artists in our hobby that create incredible art with them!

Enough rambling, haha, here’s what I’m doing.

I’m putting together kits that include very nearly everything you’ll need to paint a horse - including instructions in the form of videos and blog posts - right here! I’m fine tuning the kits and instructions now and hope to have everything available very soon. (Possibly next week)

Each kit will come with: paint, brushes, a palette for mixing, and some other small tools I swear by. Also included will be a lightly prepped and primed stablemate.

My idea is to give someone a relatively inexpensive option to participate in NaMoPaiMo and an introduction to painting horses if this is their first time. Also, to give an introduction to this medium if you’ve never tried acrylics before.

What color will we be painting? Well, since it is the year of the Fire Horse - a red chestnut! 🔥🐎 (this is also a very simple color to do)

The number of kits available may be very limited, I only have a few put together right now. For pricing I’m thinking $30 shipped, in the US. Sorry, no international at this time as I’m not clear on the rules for shipping paint to other countries. This is an introductory offer and if it’s helpful, I may expand on it in the future.

Please let me know if you would like to take part in this introductory offering! Based on interest, I may put together a few more kits!

🔥 🐎 🎨 Below are a few examples of horses I've painted with this same red chestnut color. Solid red chestnut, on a medallion I finished in July 2025:

Red chestnut with extensive pinto markings, on a resin I finished February 2025:

Red chestnut with tobiano pattern, on a custom Breyer I finished March 2024:

Who wants to paint a Fire Horse?

Tiny Tack Marathon - The Start

A few months ago, a friend asked me if I'd like to go to The Little Horse Show - put on by Stone Horses, in Indiana, in early September.  I said, "sure!".

After paying for entry, I began studying the class list and then an idea crept in.  What if I did Performance?  What if I did only Performance?  What if... I picked ONE horse and tried to enter every single class with that horse?

I was quite intrigued by the idea and thought it would be a great "excuse" to push my tack making and my (largely untested) Performance showing skills.  

Then came the selection process. 

First I thought, which breed can do everything?  Which could I probably find lots of references for?  Arabian was what I came up with - it doesn't hurt that they are a favorite breed of mine. 

Okay, which Arabian?  I briefly considered the idea of making a CM Stablemate Arabian in a walking or trotting pose, but I decided trying to do that AND make ALL of the tack and entries might be a bit much, even for me...

My pick, as you may already know by now, was a mini Khemosabi resin that I had painted during NaMoPaiMo in 2020.  I had named him Sound The Bugle.  I really liked the idea of doing this adventure with him.  

He had recently returned from his own big adventure, where he and everyone else in this herd had just returned from Kentucky.  The same friend who brought up the idea of going to The Little Horse Show had proxy showed for me at Equilocity during BreyerFest!

A certain little bay Arabian was drafted from that chaos there and chosen to prep for another big show.

As a bit of a bonus, for the marathon of tack making to come, he has his own "stunt double".  I have another copy of this resin, still unpainted.   

Okay, little guy(s), let's get to work!

I did a TON of brain storming, research, and note taking. 

First up for studio work was sculpting some saddle trees.  As much as I had planned to use the stunt double for most things, I had to draft the "hero horse" for making saddle trees, because I figured I would need several saddles.  

I used Apoxy Sculpt and started with a variety of saddles in mind (english, western, endurance, costume).  In the days to come, as the saddle trees were cured, I popped them off the horses and sculpted more.

(Those little plastic bins I had found at the dollar store proved to be absolutely necessary for this whole project)

More saddle stuff!

The bin for saddles started having a good number to experiment with.

In addition to saddles, I would need a lot of leather lace.  I skivved, prepped, and split lace in a few colors.  

For sizes, I had prepped everything from 1/4", 1/8", 3/32", and 1/16"... but even 1/16" was too wide.  I knew I would have split it.  Oddly, that was something I put off for a little while.  I hadn't done it before and I was overthinking it (big surprise).  

An interesting development - once I had a pile of prepped lace and was avoiding splitting some of it - was that I ended up dog sitting for a friend of ours for a few days.  Last time I had done this, I had taken some projects over and hung out.  Most notably, I started an Arabian costume that I think of as "The Lucy".

This is Lucy.  She is a very sweet pupper.

I've long known of the power of being "somewhere else" for the creative process, particularly when stuck on a project.  

It was while hanging out with Lucy again that I started splitting leather lace and..  I found it easy to do!  

The prep work, fabrication, and assembly continued at tack desk in the studio,

and at the kitchen bar that Brent built.

You can see how much those little bins helped.  Also, a lot of post it notes were used to try and stay organized - while trying to work on a project that was actually several smaller ones at the same time.

This was, more or less, the start of the whole thing!  

Back On The Saddle - A Decade Later

Remember that time 10+ years ago when I started working on my first leather saddle?

I had done a few posts about it here, like this one where I had cut all of the pieces out.  Also, this one where I did, probably, the biggest upgrade that will be done on it, stepping up the stirrups.

Well, I've been working on it again.  I was guessing it had been 10 years (possibly more) since I had worked on it and apparently, according to this blog, I was right.

Here's how it looked when I set up to work on it again last night:

Those clothespins have been on there all this time.  To Japan and back, and through several other moves.

I think these parts are thoroughly glued together now.

So... why go back to it now?

I have been both excited and intimated by the idea of making saddles.  Over the years I've sort of danced around them, making many saddle stands and saddle pads... but no saddles.  I've continued to study saddles, collect references and dream, but that was it.

Interestingly, I've now done a LOT of work with leather - mostly strap goods (bridles, halters, harness work, and so on).  When I started this saddle, it was my very first big, "real" (leather) project.  It was... as I said, exciting and scary. 

Last month, in early September, I made my first "serious" go at showing performance, which is something I could easily write a few posts about - and I hope to!  I went with the goal of showing one horse in every performance class and I just about pulled it off (choosing to skip a few classes toward the end, to put more time into my biggest entry).

As you might guess, to pull that off, I needed saddles.  And so, harnessing the power of last minute, I did show with 5 saddles that I made.  Or, almost made.  I'm not sure I consider them finished, but anyhow, I did it!  

I ran the gauntlet of English saddles,

a Western saddle (which was the most unfinished of them, but I went for it anyway),

and an "other saddle", for Endurance. 

After all of that, saddles felt less scary.  Surely if I made several mini scale saddles in short time, I could handle that old Traditional scale western saddle I'd started?

Another motivator is that I have been working hard on my Etsy shop over the last month, clearing some of the logjam of things I've made that need to be photographed and listed to sell.  Last week the batch of photos and listings that I worked on was a bunch of saddle pads.  Again I thought, it'd be nice to have a saddle to show them off with.  

So, I dug out ye olde started saddle and here we are.

I picked up right where I left off, on the cinches.  I fished gluing on the liners and attached the connector strap between them.  I also pinched the holes in the billets, grabbed a horse, and cinched up what I had for the first time!  (that was pretty dang cool)

I do remember that I hit a snag in the kit instructions that derailed me and, well... 10 years have gone by.  I DID find, what I felt were, much better instructions for that part at some point and so I did get a piece of it done, with no record of when or where that happened.  That piece was the front half of the tree.

I did go a bit farther with assembly last night; I attached that front piece to the lower skirt and I also attached the stirrup fenders.  Oh, and I glued the cantle support  piece onto the back of the cantle.  Next up is putting the back half of the tree on, then the upper skirt, seat..  and so on.  

As usual, for me, I'm already thinking about future possibilities.  In the last 10 years I've learned a lot about working with leather, including a bit about stamping, carving, and tooling.  When I started it, I had really wanted to make this saddle fancy in some way, but had decided to leave it plain.  I'm already pondering what I might do on the next one... I've also acquired some exciting tool in the last 10 years, like the elusive Rio Rondo basket weave stamp.  

It feels good to be working on an OLD project again. 

Maybe I'll get out the stagecoach again sometime soon - ha!

A Morning In The Studio

I keep thinking it would be fun to do a video where I do a "day in the life" type of thing, or even jst share my morning routine.  Video is still something I struggle with - though it's on my (crowded) short list of things to work on.  So how about a bit of a photo essay, instead?

After coffee, first things first, it's down the hallway to the studio.  This hallway has an "overflow" shelf of fabric, floss, projects, and some of my tatting things. 

Cracking open the door to the cave of wonders!

My routine for a little while has been this: after entering the studio, I turn on the light, and change the daily horse calendar.  

It's neat to see what the day's horse will be and it's usually inspiring (some of the pictures aren't great, but most are interesting).  Today's horse is fun!  

After checking out the horse(s) of the day, I generally reacquaint myself with how I left things the day before.

Right, this guy got a bath yesterday, in preparation to prime him.  

He is the Wycked Wynd resin, by Morgen Kilbourn.  I chose him to be my horse for this years NaMoPaiMo.  I'll be painting him chestnut.  Yesterday, after making the final selection, taking my entry selfie, he got a bath.  I also bathed another horse and planned to primer both of them last night.  Unfortunately, it seemed I got a bit of water in "Wynd", through the airhole, so he had to dry overnight.  

So, this morning's status was that he needed that coat of primer.

Over on the tack desk, I was working on two brown leather halters, sized on the Duende mold.
 

They are very close to being done.  I just have to attach the throatlatches on the other side, and put on the chin/under jaw pieces.  

I'm experimenting with a way of "speed building" halters and it seems to be working.  It's still not super fast, but I'm finding I can do multiples at once fairly easily.  I have a set of pieces to use as a guide when attaching hardware.  So I don't have to measure every single piece as I go, just do precise fitting toward the end - if that makes any sense.  

Last night, I also skived and prepped some lime green colored leather lace.  I plan to make a halter or two with this and also a lime green endurance set (halter bridle combo and breastplate or breast collar).

Another thing on today's plan is to start rearranging the chaos on the painting desk.  

I'd like to move my latop over there and make space for the workshop that starts Thursday evening. 

That is the Introduction to Oil Painting class held by Equine Art by Heather Bullach.  The color for the class is black, a favorite color of mine.  Some of yo may know that I took this class last year, too...  Yep, I got all of the supplies, tuned in for, I think, two of the Zoom sessions, but missed the rest.  I didn't ever actually start, because oils scare me, they still scared me and so...  yeah.  Take two!

This morning I took a quick glance at the painting chaos to see if those supplies are still handy.  Yep, there they are.  

The only thing not there are the brushes, which are in a drawer nearby.

I'm *still* scared of oils, but I'm going to go for it anyway.  

Okay, plan for the morning made, time to prime that horse!

This is my favorite primer.  I get it at O'Reilly Auto Parts.  It comes in several colors and I have all of them (black, dark grey, light grey, white, and this red).  Since Wynd will be a chestnut, I'm going with red primer.  

Out to the garage I went, after shaking the can for a few minutes....  And back in I came, because this can won't spray.    

I had a fuzzy memory of this happening before - probably with this can!  So I noted the problem on the can lid this time.  The nozzle might be fixable, or I might just take the can in for disposal, but at least I'll know now which can is the problem child.  

Moving on!  Brand new can of red primer deployed, shaken for a few minutes, back out into the garage with us.

After spraying, he spent a few minutes in the garage, then I moved him down to the basement to finish drying.  It's warmer than outside in the garage, but still cold.  

In the basement was the Dani model that I bathed and primed last night.  She will be my black oils horse.  She needs a tiny bit more prep, which I plan to do today.  

She most likely won't be perfectly prepped in time for the class, but that's fine.  I'm really trying to work on the idea of "progress, not perfection".  

After parking Wynd in the basement and bringing Dani up to the studio, I had breakfast, and did a couple of social media posts (I'm trying to get better about remembering to do that).

Instagram:

Facebook:

(And I'm also writing this blog post!)

I took a late morning break to go do my farm chores: feed Bo, let the chickens out, and check on everyone out there.  A friend stopped by briefly on her way to town.  She brought back a couple of egg cartons, a piece of blueberry bar she baked, and we had brief chat about the ups and downs of being a self employed maker.  She does incredible wood working and we have talked about doing some laser collaborations.

After I hit "publish" here, I need to box up an order from my Etsy shop and head to the post office.  I sold a classic scale western bridle!  

That's what went on this morning in the studio!  

Wordless Wednesday: Almost Finished