Jump!

Can you guess what jump I'm building? The flash washed out the color; it's really a darker blue. Please excuse the mess in the background, I just snapped a quick pic ;)

Almost wordless Sunday

My mini Fabrizio is currently being prepped and will then be painted a yummy chestnut with four white socks and a blaze. He'll be painted by the Dutch painter Birgitte Konings :)

Current state of affairs

There's still a lot to do but it looks like I'll be able to finish my saddle in time for the show. I haven't got much time to write so for now you'll have to do with these two photos I took earlier today. Only six days left before we leave for Leeuwarden! Now back to tooling the upper skirt ;)

Stirrups

Just a quick update on the western pleasure saddle. Almost all tooling is done and today I made the stirrups. This is the first time I used silver tape and I quite like the way it looks. Working with it takes some practice still but I'll manage.

Long overdue update

Wow, I managed to neglect my blog for way too long! The saddle pictured in the last post has been done for nearly two months now so it's about time I show you some pictures. I still need to make reins and a chin strap before I can show it in Groningen in three weeks.



And here's what I'm working on now. It's going to be a fully tooled western pleasure saddle with custom silver plates. I want to have it finished before the show in Groningen, so I've got exactly 18 days left to finish it. Less if I don't want to be too stressed out at Erin's model horse get-together the day before the show. Ambitious, me? You're kidding, haha! Both my other saddles took me more than six months to complete but it helps that I know how to do things now and Erin has been a huge help with finding the right tools and materials (yay for gum tragacanth and silver tape!), so I think I should be able to pull it off. I'll keep you updated :)

Almost there

Still alive and still working on my cantle pattern... I'm almost there though, after 7 different versions. All I have to do now is draw a final 'clean' version :) Apart from the cantle and the stirrup keepers the saddle has been done for a little over two weeks. I only have various in progress pics now and it's too dark to make new ones so these will have to do for now. I hope to have this saddle finished by tomorrow evening because I'm going to visit Erin in Leeuwarden! Woohoo!!

Making progress

It's my second western saddle, first attempt with tooling and dye. At the moment I'm tweaking the pattern a bit. I didn't like the way the cantle looked on my first saddle so I'm changing it. If I can keep up this pace it should be done within a week, maybe two :)


I really should be writing a paper right now...

Show photos

Here's a selection of the photos I took at the live show in Amstelveen last weekend.

Awesome tacky tack by Erin Corbett!

Winning western entry, also by Erin Corbett.

Really cool German harness entry

Performance Reserve Champ. Tack by Jennifer Buxton, jump by Melanie Miller, the model is a Vertical Limit resin painted by ?

Arabian costumes by Sanne Heldens

Arabian costumes and diorama by Querine van der Weijde

"Breyer collector" by Marcelino

Lovely Finnegan, he's got such a nice, soft color. Painted by Sommer Prosser

My favorite horse of this show! Knightly Cadence painted by Carol Williams

Sencillo painted by ?

A beautiful Caprice

Totilas CM by Querine van der Weijde

Gorgeous CM ISH

CM Norwegian Fjords by Querine van der Weijde. Mine is the third one from the left

Western saddles by Erin Corbett! I could have looked at them all day

Just.. WOW!

Halter is finished!

Woohoo!! My first finished Arabian halter! I finished it close to midnight the day before the show so I had to take my final pictures at the show before giving it to my friend. He really likes it, yay! This certainly won't be my last Arabian halter; I had great fun making it, playing with threads and fimo clay :) I have three more weeks to go before my summer vacation starts and I really can't wait. There are so many things I want to work on. First my mahogany western saddle, then my racing set and another Arabian halter and and and... No time to get bored this summer, haha!

Here are two pictures I took at the show:


The cowries before I glued them onto the halter:

Show preparations

Dusting, tacking up, packing, checking and double-checking. And then there's still the yellow Arabian halter I have to finish before tomorrow. Currently I'm making cowries.


When I've finished those I need to make six tassels and put it all together :)

Another Arabian halter

Hmm, I thought I'd mainly be making western saddles... Oh well, I might just as well do something else while waiting for my saddle tree to arrive. This is what I've been working on:


It's for my live show buddy, for driving me to the live show in Amstelveen. I'll probably make a matching collar for the live show in Groningen in October. It's not finished yet. I still need to trim the ends, make the cowries and maybe tassels. I found two versions of this type of halter so I'm letting my friend choose if he wants it with or without tassels.

Some details:

Note that the middle braid is facing the opposite direction.


By far the largest part of yellow Arabian halters (as far as I know) is finished with red:

This one is finished with black. I should have used gold chain but I couldn't find a chain that I liked. Also note the different type of cowrie medallions, with five shells instead of four:

Surprise, suprise!

Every Saturday I help out at a therapeutic riding center. I've been doing it for ten years now and it's really rewarding. Last year they bought a Fjord mare, Ozenka, from a horse dealer (?? not sure if that's the correct term). She's a great horse. Very easy-going, friendly and she's not afraid of special equipment. After some time she started getting fatter and fatter, even after she'd been put on a diet. They called the vet to check if she was pregnant and he said she wasn't. Eventually it turned out she was.

May 13, at 02:30 in the morning she gave birth to a beautiful red dun tobiano filly. Nobody knows who the father is and since the dealer sort of refuses to cooperate it could remain a mystery forever.

Isn't she cute? I'm completely in love!!

Arabian halter

When I first started collecting I planned to stick to Quarter Horses, Paints, Appaloosas and anything else that could qualify as a western horse. For a time it seemed to be working but somehow Polaris managed to find his way into my collection and since I love the bright colours of native Arabian costumes I decided that no traditional Arabian horse could just sneak in without getting at least an Arabian halter. This is my first halter and it's still in progress. The pictures aren't really up to date. It does have a nose chain and I've made the tassles and throatlatch but I didn't get the camera out yet. I'm planning to also make a collar and have them both finished for a show on June 5 in Amstelveen. Maybe in the course of this year I'll also attempt a full costume but I'll have to find a lot of courage to do that.

Headpiece

Lead rope

Cowries


Three of my (many) reference photos

Bosals

When I was making my first western saddle a year ago, my friend Charlotte offered to make me a bridle. She asked me what I would like and after some thinking I decided I'd really like to have a bosal. She honestly admitted that she was willing to give it a try but that it might not be up to my standards so in the end we settled for a rope bridle, which turned out beautifully :) Still the bosal kept bugging me and since it wouldn't leave me alone I decided to give it a try myself. This is what I have to show for it.



It's a plain bosal without braiding or zig-zag pattern but for a first try I really like it. The coolest thing about bosals is that you also get to make mecates. I just love the endless color combinations you can make with three colors of embroidery thread. I've made a couple so I can choose a matching mecate for the horse I'm showing.



In this picture my saddle wasn't finished yet and I borrowed this pad from a friend. I've since added concho's and bought my own pad :)

First post

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the first post of this blog. This will be my place to tell the world what's going on in my studio. I'm a beginning tackmaker, so don't expect too much of what I'll be making ;) I don't have as much time to spend on tackmaking as I'd like because I'm a fulltime student and I'm a perfectionistic nut who wants everything to be just right. This makes me a very slow worker but hey, at least I'm having fun! I'm planning to update my blog weekly but knowing myself I might miss a week here or there. We'll see how it goes :)