A Job

Thank you for everyone who prayed and hoped for me to get this job. I heard this morning after waking up that I got it!!

We celebrated with a late lunch at Joe's Crab Shack after spending the day browsing IKEA and Dicks Sporting Goods.

It looks like more models are in my near future!

Arabian Halters- GC Version

My first effort with beaded halters paid off. By marketing to Grand Champion collectors, I was able to bypass the difficult to handle Breyer and resin buyers, who expect top-notch LSQ work, something I'm not even close to being able to create. GC lovers want fun and pretty, and that I can do.

My first halter I made for myself was asked about, and that turned into a family set!

The mare's was the original. I had created it to fit on the Arabian pose mare, but luckily the browband was adjustable, and it easily adapted to the classic mare's head.

The stallion's head is a bit wider, so his was custom made to fit his broad face. Also, the star piece I used had an extra loop at the bottom, so I strung a set of beads between it and the side rings.

It will look great sitting on a shelf, as it's much too delicate for too much movement. The rhinestones are supposed to be self-adhesive, but they don't stick very well through on-again off-again motions. I didn't want to use any ribbon glue, in case it stiffened the breastcollar and made it not flexible.

Either way, it turned out very cute!

Prayers

A bit of a personal post. I got laid off from my job back in October of last year, and have been working as a photographer at dealerships for a little bit of income, enough to pay the bills, that is. It hasn't left much room for savings, pet care, dental, etc, let alone more model buys.

Today I was told by my boss that yet another dealership is having issues, and not to go there for a bit. I'm down to only two dealerships, and it's not enough to get me by. So I came home and jumped on craigslist, and there was ONE ad about a trainee engineering position, by a company I'd tried last year and never got a response. I figured I would give it a shot again, and sure enough, I got asked in for an interview.

I'm just asking for prayers or fingers crossed by everyone I can get, that I do well in the interview and if possible get this job. Having money worries taken off my chest would be fabulous right about now. It's literally enough to turn my life around; that's how important getting this job could be.

The interview is Monday. I'll let everyone know how it goes!

My Breeding Project- Overo Arabians

First, a bit about me:
I am an anti-critic. Whenever someone criticizes a book or movie, or dislikes something for no real valid reason other than out of spite or to be 'different' than the crowd, it makes me want to defend it more. I enjoy things. I really like food, and all kinds of books, and all kinds of movies. And to relate this back to our favorite topic-- all kinds of horses. There are several breeds that cause a lot of debate, and one of these is the Pintabian. It is considered a 'designer' breed and yada yada yada. What matters is it's beautiful. And it's mostly Arabian. Arabians with color. Really? You can't get much better than that.

So I wanted to make my own beautiful breed. Same concept. Just....I've always fancied overo slightly more than tobiano. And I had several models of Arabian type sporting a frame overo pattern. Why not? The overo gene is lethal in its homozygous form, but the goal of my program would be breeding back to pure Arabians, which would never carry the gene and allow it to become homozygous; therefore, the lethal aspect would not exist in my program. The only stipulation of course, being that an Overo-Arabian (Ovab? Overabian? Arabero? so much fun!) could not be bred to another one of the same type. And of course this pretty much negates the idea of being a real breed. A breed in which members can't breed to each other? Nonsense!
I can only imagine all the critics now. But the great part is-- this is model horses, and everything is hypothetical and theoretical and fantasy, and fun.

So, I had the idea and the motivation. The next step was the models. My end goal was to create him:

SFC Fire Song, 99.2% Arab

Not only did I have to breed up the overo pattern, but the cream gene as well. Finding models (I do not like creating a string of BSOs for breeding projects, as that isn't enough of a challenge for me) with both would be tough, but I was sure I could make it work. In fact, I had a huge group of pinto patterned horses awaiting IDs, too many to make all of them Paints!

Honestly, I could've made him a Paint-Arabian cross and called it good, but he is one of my favorite Arabian molds and I wanted to keep him as high percentage as I could. If I wanted to mimic the Pintabian, 99% was high enough. It takes seven generations to reach that from two parents of different breeds. I decided mares and stallions could produce foals at 4. I started with a mixed list of stallions and mares until I figured out an acceptable year to begin breeding. That happened to be 1988.

SFC Sultan of Luck

I started with an ambiguous foal. No one can tell exactly how a 50/50 cross will look, as genes don't always influence exactly half the time or in the same way. So I knew the first foal did not have to contain a lot of Arabian characteristics. He was also a passable buckskin, so he was a good start for the cream gene. 

I crossed Sultan on my Arabian mare, SFC Desert Night by Cass Ole(r) and got a lovely palomino filly with a more expressive form of frame-

SFC Desert Sun

She was bred back to our stallion SFC Ambition by Paarden (r) to create a stunning palomino colt SFC Desertion.

SFC Desertion

SFC Desertion bred with my Arabian mare SFC Pirouette by Padron (r) to create a smoky black mare SFC Dark Ballet.

SFC Dark Ballet

Dark Ballet was a custom done for me by my good friend Cari. She was originally pedigreed in my stable as a Paint, but I knew her Arabian features and flashy color deserved a more important role. She was bred to SFC Fire At Bey by Huckleberry Bey (r) to produce SFC Bey Ballet, a fiesty buckskin colt.

SFC Bey Ballet

By this time, Bey Ballet was foaled 2004 and 96.88% Arab. I still had a few breedings to do before I reached 99% Arabian, and that foal would be too young to immediately produce 'full' Overo Arabian foals. Of course I opted to make that last horse a stallion so he could sire multiple foals his first foal crop.

Bey Ballet covered SFC Sirens Song by Ruminaja Ali (r) and produced SFC Ballet Song. She is the key-at 98.4% Arabian, when crossed with a pure Arabian, she would foal 99.2% foals. And she only had two open years- 2012 and 2013. 2012 went to my foundation stallion Fire Song. 2013 went to auction, to hopefully be won by someone with as much vision as I have for my special project.

SFC Ballet Song

I am so happy to finally have it finished, but I will be even more excited in two years when Fire Song's first foals start making their debut.

I plan to breed Bey Ballet again to create another 'key', this time a stallion. This key will have the ability to produce 99.2% Overo Arabians even though they aren't 'full' themselves. That way I will have a half sibling I can use to promote in the next auction, as well.

My next goal will be to breed up the roan gene with the overo, but I don't have to tell you how hard those models will be to find! Looks like I might have a lot of cm'ing to do in my future ;)

I was a little disappointed that most of my breeding stock turned out to be foals, but that just happened to be what I had needing to be ID'd. Hopefully my roans will be more adult bodied than foal.

Thanks for reading about my breeding project!

Grand Champions Model Horse Club

Back in 2010, I was still relatively new to the online model horse scene. I was just setting up my s/d list and getting my horses into photo showing. But I learned very early on that GCs were not rated very high in the community. And yet I found little pockets of collectors strewn throughout the web of collectors, so I created a forum specifically for lovers of this retired brand.

It lasted a year before real life swamped many of the regulars, and first the photo showing and then the club died down to a bare trickle. New collectors came along, wrote a post, and then faded out when no reply came. Much of the hobby migrated to Facebook, and forums were used mostly as bases for photo showing clubs, as much of the main interactions including buying and selling took place on the popular site. It seemed like there was not much use for the old forum format anymore.

So it was to my surprise that a discussion, albeit small, had cropped up on -surprise, surprise- my old club! The posters were lamenting the ghost board, and wishing for more activity. I responded, gauging their interest, and then went back to the forum to scrounge around in the dust and see what I could dig up. Although many of the posts were old, the framework was solid. I knew in a couple hours of cleanup, the club could be as good as new. I set to work. The worst that could happen was it flopped again.

My first step was upgrading. Proboards offered a Version 5 format to their forums. I knew in order to get a fresh start, the forum needed a new look. I went ahead with the upgrade, and then fiddled with the color palettes for awhile before settling on an earthy set. As much as I wanted pink, I wanted something that felt homey more!

Here is the final result (although I think you now have to become a member to view it, if I did it right!)--

www.gcmhc.proboards.com

My favorite upgrade was the addition of the shoutbox, a feature that allows all the members to interact in a chat room, something none of the clubs I am a part of focuses on. Facebook can come close, but often people pop on to post and then pop off, only returning to respond to an inquiry on their post. I feel like if there was more real-time discussion and communication in the hobby, a lot of the cattiness would fade and people would become greater friends. Obviously it could never come close to hanging out in person, but for a group of strangers, it's a start.

V5 allowed me to send a mass email to all members, something I would normally never do, but in this case, I wanted to let everyone know that there was a club to come back to.

Now, the only thing to do it wait.

Crafty

I'm not normally a crafty person. Nor am I a very sporty person. Let's just say that unless it involves more than some complicated button mashing on a video game, I'm not a very coordinated person.

However, lately I've been feeling the heat and its making me all stuck-in-the-house moody similar to how the Wyoming winter made me feel. So I've managed to turn that into a 'let's make things!' mood.

First it was a spontaneous Stablemate halter....

The only chain I had available was a bit big, but not bad for a 15-minute halter at 7 am on a rainy morning ^.^

A few days later, I felt like trying out another blanket, after buying nice new black material for my base. The black fabric I'd been using before was much too thin for my liking. I added some rhinestones to spice it up. Looks great on my gray mare! Very Western Pleasure.

And then I made a big venture--an Arab Presentation set for Grand Champions! I knew I didn't have enough experience or skill to compete in a Breyer market, but I think Classics and GCs are much underdone, so I set about making one to keep, or sell if anyone showed interest. Thankfully, two people did!

I'm still working on adding all the beads to the breastcollar. We'll see if the buyers are interested in the collars or just the halters. Either way, looks like I hit a small field of interest!