New Laptop!

I've put in a lot of shifts at work lately, so I decided I could finally afford to buy my own laptop:

MSI CR620

I love it! It's got a nice, bright screen, which will be perfect for digital art once I get the tablet drivers installed. It's also not very heavy. And I love Windows 7!

Overall, I'm very pleased with it :D

New Prismacolors

I received my new set of 132 Prismacolors about a week ago and have since set about drawing some long-overdue gift art. It's still very much a work in progress, but here's the picture so far:



Suffice it to say, I love my Prismacolors!

Bullfighting Tack

Hola!

As you can see, I'm back from Spain. Over the next few days, I plan to shower you with photos of that beautiful country. First, however, I feel the need to post something I find very exciting: bullfighting tack!

During our stay in Seville, my school group made a stop at the bullfighting ring and museum. I got some very strange looks from our guide when I started freaking out over this display (apologies for the horrid picture quality):













Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of any informational signs about this, so my knowledge of its background is limited. It sure is cool though!

Leaving for Spain

Hey, everyone!

So, this march break (well, actually Wednesday) I'm going to Spain with my school choir! This will be the first time I've ever flown and I'm really looking forward to it :D. I'll be bringing my camera, so hopefully I'll see some Spanish tack while I'm there and be able to take my own reference photos for once. Anyway, wish me luck (and brace yourself for an onslaught of photos when I get back)!

Success!

I've been delving into braiding recently (my inspiration is Susan Bensema Young: http://pages.prodigy.net/sbytsii/tsii/). I've figured out how to do a Spanish Ring knot and a Pineapple knot from her book, The Guide to Making Model Horse Tack. However, I knew that if I really wanted to make braided tack, I'd have to learn how to interweave knots. Today, with the help of this site: http://khww.net/articles.php?article_id=34, I finally did!



This is made from dental floss and embroidery floss. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up some of the thread SBY recommended soon, though.

For scale (you can see that it's not quite small enough for a model horse):



I'm not sure what went wrong with this side:



Still, I'm so excited! This is a huge breakthrough for me :)

Workspace Organization

I haven't posted much lately because I've been busy with exams and haven't done a lot of tack making. I have, however, done some organizing. My workbench was becoming unpleasant to work at because it was cluttered with so much stuff:

I just realized how horrendous these photos are. Sorry about that!

Now my desk looks like this:

Better, right?

On the weekend, I made a stop at Michael's to pick up some supplies. A snazzy organizer:

And some tools and materials:

-Round-nosed pliers (the packaging said "sparkle pliers". I had no idea why until I opened it--the handles are purple with blue sparkles!)
-Green wire snips (hopefully they'll work well for cutting buckles apart as well)
-Ergonomic exacto knife for skiving
-Thin wire for buckle tongues
-Sticky wax
-Pencil punch (alright, I found this in a drawer and just mangled it until it submitted to my will)
-Jewel-It and Tacky Glue
-a giant mallet that I found in the garage ;)

Now that my workspace is organized, it should be much nicer to work on tack! Here's what I've been slowly picking away at while my desk was out of commission:

Cross-stitching is very relaxing :)

Hungarian Heritage Bridle?

This is something that's been bugging me for some time now. Has anyone in the hobby figured out how to do the knotted browband attachment and hanging side decorations on this type of Hungarian bridle?

More pictures can be found here on The Baroque Horse Store site: http://www.usfriesianreferral.com/tack.html.

This site has more of this type of bridle: http://www.barokshop.com/contents/en-uk/d10_Hongaarse_hoofdstellen_hungarian_bridle.html

I really like the look of this and think it would be fantastic in model scale. I'm stumped as to how to do it though! As far as I can tell, it's made by braiding strips of fine leather lace together. I counted 6 to 8 lace ends on one "rope". Strange.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!