Still alive! ... also Namopaimo, whoop whoop!!

Soooo... I've managed to neglect my blog for eight (!!) full years. Needless to say I've been busy and a lot has happened in the past eight years. Some of it good, some of it not so much, but I'm back! I got my degree (yay!), I have a job and we just sort of finished moving into our new house. All of this means that my life is finally stabilizing and that I can start spending my time and energy doing things I like doing instead of only trying to hold everything together. This also means that this year I finally signed myself up for Namopaimo. The past two years I followed Namopaimo closely on Jennifer Buxton's blog but couldn't participate and I really felt like I was missing out. So when January came around again and the first Namopaimo announcement was posted, I decided that this year I was not going to live vicariously through Jennifer's blogposts. I hunted down a body, decided on a color, paid the optional $2 entry fee and sent in my submission. It's happening!

This my victim: a Breyer Paint Me A Pepto. Funny side story here. There is a webshop in the Netherlands that sells Breyers. I suspect they did some automated translating on some of their products, because they sell this horse as "Verf een Pepto", which is Dutch for Paint a Pepto. I'm now actually going to paint a Pepto and that made me chuckle. If her paintjob turns out somewhat showable (I can have high hopes, right?) she needs a show name along the lines of Pepto Has Been Painted. But let's not gallop too far ahead.

She will be buckskin. I envision her as a slightly sooty buckskin with faint dappling, three white socks with ermine spots and a tiny star. We'll see how that goes. I'm not exactly an accomplished painter. As far as model horses go I've only painted a stablemate once and it still hasn't got its eyes or hooves painted. My medium will be pastels for the coat and acrylics for the details. I entered as a 'beginner' and my personal goal is to actually finish my model this time. These photos will be my main reference for everything but the markings.

I'm not the only hobbyist in the Netherlands who is participating in Namopaimo this year. Anna Dobrowolska-Oczko of Horse and Bird studio hosted a prepping party yesterday and the turnout was good. In the photo you can see Marjolein, Marchella, Niels (Marchella's boyfriend), Anna and myself. Anna is a great sculptor and had some helpful tips, tricks and advice for us. There was some seam removal, some hoof adjusting, some airhole relocation, but mostly there was a whole lot of sanding. The black paint on my Pepto was very rough and I've been sanding for hours. Good company made that so much more bearable. I'm very grateful to Anna for inviting us!

Since I deleted my facebook account 2 years ago I'll be posting my Namopaimo progress here. I'm sad to miss out on the tutorials and the awesome community in the facebook group, but hey, at least I'm finally participating.

Namopaimo will certainly not be the only thing I'm going to talk to you about, although it will be my main focus for the next month and a half. There will also be posts about tack and props that I made and that I'm currently working on. Most notably a bridle to go with my western pleasure saddle (the one with 165 flowers carved and tooled into it (yes, I counted them)) and two in progress Crow women's ceremonial horse costumes. Because of course it makes sense to start a second one before the first one is even finished. But that's for another time.