Creating Mochi the Percheron

I first posted these progress photos on Imgur, which I normally use as a photo dump when I need to share images on forums or the like. I posted it publicly, which I don't usually do, and it actually proved to be quite popular, amassing over 2000 likes despite most people not knowing about needle felting or model horses! So I thought I could share it here, where my readers are actually horsey and might appreciate it as well.

I documented Mochi's creation step by step as I wanted to check how long it actually takes me to finish my felties. I'd been telling people they take "about 20 hours start to finish" but that sounded a bit absurd to me! Turns out I wasn't exaggerating as much as I thought...

So here we go:

30 minutes in: Armature done. Sorry for the less than stellar photo, I wasn't planning to post this online!

1h15 in: Starting to build up the basic body shape. The book he is standing on is what I use to double check proportions

1h15 in

2h15 in: some more building up

C H O N K Y

4h in: Still building up, starting to smooth out and add detail with Merino top coat. Starting to work on the legs as well.

5h30 in. At this point I ran out of Merino and had to order some more!

9h30 in. He has a face! Starting to work on his fleabites whenever I get bored of sculpting his body. At this point, hooves are sculpted and drying.

I felt bad for his lack of ears!

12h30 in. Starting to look like a horse! Hooves sanded, painted and glued in.

16h in. At this point I decided I wasn't happy with the ears so they have been pulled out and redone. Ready for his top coat :D

18h15: Mostly finished, just needs some smoothing out and blending of the fleabites. Any stray fibres will be carefully burned off with a lighter.

And done!! 19h total in the end.

A tiny man!

Taking him outside for some photos.

This was a good incentive to clear the garden a bit!

Elkwood Farms' Tack Room

It's taken me a while to name my Julippy stables - I wanted something that sounded charming and rural, I'm not sure if I succeeded but now I'm attached to the Elkwood name, so that's that!

I might change my blog's name as well, but I've done it so many times now that it seems almost silly to do it again!

A tack room is something I've wanted to cobble together for a while, mostly because I get annoyed by all the saddles and props spread about the bookshelves and can never find things when I need them! But it's also been a while since I've done miniature decorating and it makes my heart happy :D

I couldn't wait until tomorrow to set it up and take photos, so they're not brilliant as it was a bit dark.

The room itself was measured and cut out of a cardboard box, with some bits reinforced with duct tape, and then I painted up the walls and used some grey felt for the floor. I had a little sample pot of wall paint from when I painted our furniture in a nice dark duck egg, so I used that for the walls.

The saddle racks and the little shelf were also made out of painted cardboard. The rosettes on the shelf were actually won by the ponies :D I think I'll add some brackets to the saddle racks, they're sturdy enough but it would just make them look better.

The rug is just a little scrap of fabric I grabbed exactly for this reason.

It's not finished yet; I have to think of more things to add to it. Maybe a counter or a bookshelf? I don't want to use cardboard for everything, as I do prefer the look of wood, so I might have to source some lolly sticks or balsa wood. Another visit to the local model shop might be in order!

Any suggestions would be appreciated, I'm not the best at this!!

Ben and Tornfalk

Back in March, I visited Christine for a few days. We ended up painting quite a lot of models, and somehow acquiring even more over the course of the week! Among the ponies painted were two HOTY bodies that she very generously let me steal :D Both have been resculpted with closed mouths, and the cob has had feathers added. I can't really remember who did the resculpting - Laura Bond maybe?

This is Ben, a Shire youngster. I painted him first and am really pleased with his colour!

He ended up with a really sweet face :D I did try my best to make it look Julippy, I find they look odd with very realistic paint jobs as it doesn't really fit their more stylised body shape. Christine was kind enough to hair them for me as I haven't gotten round to acquiring any mohair, and knowing me, they would hang around bald for ages....

This is Tornfalk, a North Swedish Horse. His name means Kestrel in Swedish. He is really very pretty, it's amazing how good the HOTYs can look with just a new coat of paint! I'll have to acquire some more at some point...

He has a wired dock so I can easily move his tail around which is a pretty cool feature. I tried to give him the very dark dappled bay colour typical of NSDs, not sure I succeeded but I am pleased enough with him. Of course my dapples won't ever be as good as Laura's, but I'm not super displeased about how they came out.

I can't wait to take them to Oxford Live in a few months - I really need to start making some more new tack and riders though!! Our rider Sam has taken him out for a spin by the pond and he thinks Tornfalk will make an amazing trail horse. :D

Theodore the Appy

I've always loved the Stud Spider mold. While my first Breyer was Keltec Salinero, the only one available at the tack shop at that time, I fell in love with sweet-faced Banjo and circled him on every catalogue I got after. I finally managed to get him during my internship here a couple of years ago, and recently I acquired a very rubbed, very dusty Overo Paint with a broken ear. He looked quite sad sitting on the floor like that (shelf space is at a premium until we manage to move), so it didn't take him very long to acquire a new ear and some new clothes.

I was, at first, going to paint him as an Overo, but changed my mind early on as I rather liked the changes in colour across his coat and wanted to keep as much of it as possible. It's also quite difficult, I find, to make Overos not look terribly boring and flat. 

He was my first Traditional scale custom, so I didn't want to set myself up for failure. Even so, the grulla colour was difficult to get right, and I did get a bit frustrated with all the painting and repainting of his spots.

He probably wouldn't win any shows, but I don't mind it much - I was trying to mimic the style of old vintage customs, so he isn't meant to be incredibly realistic anyway, even though I tried to get the right basics down.

With the pansies :)

And a work in progress - my latest needle felted horse, which will be an Ardennes when he's done!

A New Custom and A New (Old) Julip

A new laptop that doesn't make me tear my hair out in frustration has finally been acquired, which, along with a renewed interest for the model horse hobby, has made me finally resurrect this poor old blog. Maybe this time I will actually be able to keep to regular posts... (Ha!)

I have hidden the old posts as they were honestly a bit embarrassing. I might bring them back later on, but I'll have to give it some thought first.

Moving to the UK means buying new models is suddenly much easier and much cheaper - so I've managed to acquire a good amount of vintage Breyer bodies. Not too many, but enough for me to promise myself not to buy any more until I have these painted up. So here is the first, a shaded bay with very faint dapples on the beautiful Duchess mold. 

I tried a different painting technique in this model and it's been very effective. I work with acrylics, so blending is always quite difficult without leaving brush strokes. Here, I used a hard 1" brush and buffed the paint on instead of brushing it. It has the added bonus of helping the paint dry, which is helpful as my acrylics are quite slow drying. Good for blending, not so good for impatient people 😂

I'm quite happy with her. I work evenings and sleep for most of the daylight hours, so I usually only have decent painting light on my days off. It's frustrating but it is a good way to keep my hands occupied when I have nothing to do.

Even though I had promised myself to not buy more models for a while, a week or so ago I decided to search for Julips on the Facebook marketplace. I don't know why I did it - there never is anything interesting there, and there was no reason for this time to be different. Except it was - among a bundle of My Beautiful Horses and a few other older models, there was this guy.

I messaged the seller straight away, asking if she was willing to ship - most Facebook sellers only accept collection - and she replied that yes, she did, and the bundle was still available! I paid a whopping £20 for the lot, postage included, and a few days later a very heavy box arrived.

He was sitting right at the bottom, under 40 other horses and absolutely no bubblewrap or protection of any kind! I'm amazed he survived. And he is in really good nick as well, only minimal cracking on his white sock and a bit of deterioration on his eartips.

His name is now Spud 😀 According to his mouth letters, he was a Special Order completed in 1975. I wish I knew more about him!

I am currently working on a grullo appy Stud Spider. No pictures of him yet, so instead, have Duchess among the pansies, and until next time :)