Walk Like an Egyptian

Model horses aren't the only hobby I've dabbled in. Over the years, I've tried my hand at origami, painting, fashion design, paper making, sewing, you name it. Recently I had the chance to explore beading as well in the form of an Ancient History project on Egyptian culture:

My goal was to imitate an Egyptian collar, but simplify it a bit. It was difficult to imagine how I would craft something that would in any way resemble some of the extremely elaborate designs that the Egyptians used (do a quick Google Images search to see what I mean). Luckily, I found a bead netting tutorial that seemed to be what I was looking for.

I switched out the colours to (pinkish) red, blue and gold to make it look more like the original collars made by the Egyptians. The pattern was easy to follow once I got started, but I had to go back and redo some sections several times because I had missed a bead. About five hours and several restarts later, I came up with this necklace. I still feel like the clasp mechanism is a bit rough, but it's not bad for my first time beading!

If you're looking for something different to try that is tidy and satisfying, I definitely recommend beading!

Knots and Carving

I woke up this morning with the urge to try out the instructions in a book I recently purchased, Leather Braiding by Bruce Grant. After several failed attempts at interweaving a pineapple knot, I ended up with the blue-and-brown knot in the photo below. The smaller knots are spanish ring knots. The blue knot alone took me all morning and I don't believe that I finished it correctly, so I will probably go back to practicing at larger scales before I attempt the rest of the knots on this bridle.



The piece of leather is the beginnings of a western saddle, and my first try at carving leather. I was forced to set it down before I roundhouse kicked something! My carving tool arsenal included an awl, several small screwdrivers, various sculpting tools, and a myriad of blunt metal objects I found lying around my home. Needless to say, these didn't work particularly well. I will likely be ordering real carving tools from Tandy *le gasp!*, such as the beveler recommended by Susan Bensema Young in the Guide. It's really hard to get those tiny edges around the leaves pressed down, and then to fade the impressions out nicely.

If anyone has any suggestions and hints, be they carving or knot-tying related, I would be more than happy to hear them!

Placing at Lethbridge Live!

This is so cool!

About a year ago, I participated in the sm swap on Model Horse Blab. It was one of my first times customizing (WIP photos here.) Anywho, my swap partner, Shauna, took her to Lethbridge Live this past weekend and she placed 6th in a large class! Scroll down to see a picture: Bill Vs. The World. I'm stunned, and really pleased :D. Thanks Shauna, this is such an awesome thing to see!

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!

New BCS Halter

A while back, I won a halter in Jennifer Buxton's blog raffle. Here it is on Cadence:




Thank you Jennifer!

Is it not gorgeous? And with that eyecandy, I bid you goodnight!

3rd Time's a Charm

...or not.

Here's my latest bridle (click on picture to see all of it):







I got my RR order the other day and promptly set about making a bridle. Unfortunately, the cheek buckles are still too low . Hopefully the cheek straps are in the right place now, though--I think the browband is too long as well . And I skived some of the straps far too thin on this bridle. I don't think I'll be making another bridle till I get some pencil punches, gum trangacanth, and thin wire for the 1/16" buckle tongues. I also split the crownpiece too far up! Crud.

Anyway, feel free to critique!

The Shelf Herd comic series

I've started a new one-panel comic series about the model horse hobby in general. It's been suggested I post it on my blog, so here goes. I know it's not the best quality, but hopefully they still provide some enjoyment :)

After the first comic, I came up with a name:

Have a suggestion for a comic? Shoot me an email: regrvale@gmail.com