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...