Homegrown

There's a certain awesome feeling of owning someone else's work, especially when it's top rated stuff. I don't have many, but my awe-inspiring Amarna Arab has to be one of my prides of my collection. And don't forget stuff your amazingly talented friends make for you:

CM by Samantha Kroese

And then there's that feeling you get when you make something yourself that you're proud of. It doesn't have to be good, or even sell, but if you like it and it makes you happy and gives you -that- feeling, well, that's better than anything!

I've been painting a lot more this year, and while I still have a loooong way to go and I'm not fooling myself about it, I've also gotten to the point where I can make stuff for myself that I want and like and don't have to pay someone else to do it for me. I'm still only at the -paint toys stage- but I've slowly ventured into Breyer Classics and one Breyer Trad. (Poor Totilas, he still doesn't know what hit him hahah).

My home grown stuff wouldn't sell diddly squat against the talent that's easily available on eBay and for great prices, but you know what? That's totally okay with me, because I always paint stuff I want to keep anyway! Can't wait to see what else I end up creating this year! <3

Tentative CM'er

I hadn't yet gathered the courage to cm a perfectly fine model (straight out of the box, in fact), or to paint a Traditional size, but today I finally did both.

I managed to snag an extra Totilas for cheap from Tuesday Morning. I figured even if I ended up keeping him as a messed up cm, he'd be worth the experimentation. Or resell as a prepped body. I already knew I wanted to try my roaning technique on him. And black is my favorite base color so I didn't have much to change.

He still has a lot of flaws. Thank you bare wind and slight vibrations in the deck for knocking him over -twice!- and for the sealer for randomly dappling in one spot, and for the acrylics I used to not match the undershade so the shift is obvious....oh well. He still turned out fairly nice! Nice enough for my breeding shed!

It's too bad I couldn't just do the roaning part and have someone else touch up the rest! I am glad I opted for the higher sock in the back and the blaze....just enough to set him apart from the regular release, aside from the roan of course.

I did attempt to cover up the scratches on his hindquarter he sustained when he fell with some black roan flecks, but it's on the side I won't be showing so I'm not too worried about it. You can see the dappled dried sealer is on that same hindquarter, too.

Thanks for looking!

Treasure Hunt!

I have started to try and revive my Grand Champions club, and in doing so, have created some fun events for the club members to participate in, one of those being a treasure hunt!

I kept the list small and fairly simple to encourage first timers. As I go, I'll add more to the list and make them a bit more difficult to "find".

All it takes is the right imagination, creativity, prop, model, and a camera!


Edit:  Here are my own entries so far. It was fun digging through all this old stuff I haven't touched in a long time!

I Never Win Anything-

Until now! Finally got drawn for one of the web specials-- Athena! She's pretty, but I might photograph her to use in my sire/dam list and then trade her off for a Poseidon, as long as she has no major flaws.

Pictures coming at the end of the week once she gets in. Wyatt's on his way, too!

Russian Dons

Also known as just Dons, Donskaya,  Russian Horse, and русская верховая . That last one will be helpful for you if you want to find Russian websites (make sure your search engine filters allow for websites of other languages to pop up). Trust me, when you're researching 'rare' or otherwise hard to find breeds in the States, your best bet will be finding breeder websites or, better yet, breeding associations and pedigree databases, from the horse's original country.

Originally, I tried Don and Russian Don, and nothing helpful was coming up. You don't realize how annoying Pinterest is until it's the only thing that comes up in response to your searches, with pictures of all these beautiful horses of the breed you need, but no links to where they originally came from.

It wasn't until I tried Donskaya that I found it. http://millionhorse.com/russian_donskaya-horses-for-sale-breed.html

Only two, and not much information on the pedigrees. However, under Idriya's, I found a very short pedigree, only her sire and dam listed, in original Russian language, thankfully. I copied Дурман and put it into Google as 'Дурман horse'.

The VERY first link was this: http://www.rw-base.ru/horse.php?id=632 . A pedigree database! Am I good, or what? ;)

Now, here's what you need to know. If you're not using Google Chrome, I HIGHLY suggest it. Whenever it senses a language not in English, it creates a notice at the top asking if I'd like to translate. Sometimes I say yes, other times I don't, as I'm looking for key words in Russian. If at any time you want to translate the page, all you have to do is right click-- an option for Translate to English appears.

Once I translated, a whole bunch of information popped up. 'Datura' as he's translated in English, is an odd one, as bay is typically represented by a different word that translates as bay, not Kari. Also, with Chrome, if you hover over a word, the original translation appears. You can use this to copy characters that aren't on your typical keyboard, such as one of their names into the search bar. This site provides little camera icons whenever a horse has a photo. If you click just the icon, the photo will appear without taking you to the horse's page. This is handy if you're just trying to find a specific color. At the very bottom, you can Show List and an expanded list of offspring shows up. Handy!

Just so you know, gray and chestnut do not appear very often in the breed. I spent a lot of extra time tracking down chestnuts, and I think I found one gray in all that time, too. If you're interested, chestnut is рыж 'red haired' or рыжая 'red'. (Don't search this in google with your safe search off, just fyi!).

However, try searching рыжая жеребец русская верховая . I found a lot of black horses in the images, but also several chestnuts, which led me to some breeder websites, however those take a lot more time than scanning through pedigree databases. BUT, if you're clever like me, you find  this - http://kskatlantis.ru/publ/razvedenie_loshadej/nashi_zherebcy/tiam/12-1-0-11 . And that 'pedigree' link on his page takes you here: http://base.ruhorses.ru/horses/pedigree.php?code_horse=969833 .

That site is quite a bit harder to use; I couldn't figure out how to let it narrow down to only the Don horses. What I ended up doing was copying names of the horses I was interested in into rw-bases' seach page.

Oh, another note, if you hit the About the Project button on hte rw-bases' page, at the bottom, it will tell you all the acronyms the site uses for the different breeds. The Russian Horse had a lot of outside influences, so don't be surprised to find Arabian, Thoroughbred, Trakehner, or Akhal-Teke horses back in some of the pedigrees.

Colors:

Black- вороная

Bay- гнедая

Chestnut- рыжая

Good hunting!

Kid Kore

That's right, the brand everyone laughs at and has no problem scoffing and turning their nose up at. They are as horse shape object as you can get, much uglier than the Grand Champions line and even more conformationally-challenged.

(Maybe he'd make a decent mule!)

I recently came into ownership of quite a few of them. They were free, and I liked the paint jobs on a few of them, so I took them. I figured I could track down names or breeds or year made on a website once I got them in front of me and could identify them easier.

However, when I started my search....nothing. I had to dig quite a bit to find any helpful info, as much of the links were for eBay. On a trademark site, I found Kid Kore came into existence around 1998, which makes sense considering a lot of the brands on the inner legs say 1999. I know from the Grand Champions that the year doesn't necessarily mean that's when that specific model was released.

However, two websites that did have some information include:

• http://modelhorsegallery.info/K/K-companies/MHCs_KidkoreIntl.html

• http://neverlandstables.weebly.com/stable-champions-toys.html

They both indicate that Kid Kore released their horses under secondary brand names, such as SRC "Shenandoah Riding Club", which came out first, and then Stable Champions. The latter may have been an attempt to be a direct competition against the Grand Champions, but who knows.

I do find the Arabian quite fetching, and I think he would have been a good mate for the GC Arabian mare if GC had ever made an attempt at a good Arabian stallion.

They do have a handsome head, I think, especially if given a little GC touch-up.

(All he needs is a black pupil in that eye, and he'll be good to go!)

It also appears that the Stable Champions line had slightly better molds than the original SRC did, like the Arabian and the cantering one above, but that's just a guess. However, if that's true, it implies the original paint colors were crossed over between the two, maybe to finish off a family or two?

SRC Appy foal

SRC Appy mare

The mare and foal above were released in a set prior to the release of the Appy Stable Champion stallion, second photo. Perhaps it was another marketing move meant to compete with Grand Champions' release of family units, but it's hard to tell without knowing the years of release, or maybe even where they were placed on shelves. I can tell you when I was little, I don't remember seeing them, as I had eyes only for the GCs!
However, I continue to see Stable Champion remakes on the shelves to this day, so somehow, they managed to outlive the GC line. If I understand what I read correctly, though, Kid Kore went under around 2008? Maybe they sold off their horses to another company that continues to make them. Why GCs couldn't have had the same restoration, I don't know.

Too bad there is no identification website for them, but I'm not going to be the one to do it!

A Horse of A Different Color....A Zebra!

I had a desire to paint stripes...and so I grabbed a very common foal from 1995 and set to work. The process was fairly quick-- primer and then apply stripes, but little did I know how long the stripes would take!

Eventually, I came to the end, and the result was cuter than expected!

I'm still sad that I don't know enough about rehairing to give him a proper black-white-black hairdo, but perhaps his future owner will have the knowledge to do so. Even so, he's a right proper cutie!

His base coat shows through in some areas with a brown tint, which I think adds to his undertones very well, so I left it. And the color ran a little on some stripes with the first application of the sealer. I covered most of it the second go around, but the rest looks a little like hair, so I'm happy to leave it as is. I wish I could have made his eyes 'bigger', kind of like the anime effect. He deserves some large expressive eyes! Baby zebra, hello! ;)

I will be happy to send him off to a new, loving home, but considering how everyone is asking about parents for him, well.....I better buy some more supplies for the stripes!