Whoops it's been a week!

Hi!

I have been busy this week, not very busy with tack though. I did start four new saddles, two of them have billets and the seats are covered. Today's goal is to get the other two billeted and covered. Three of the four are spoken for as of right now, the fourth is a Dressage saddle.

The SECOND Alborozo came in this week, he will be up for sale or trade for resins at BreyerFest (Room 203 with Enterprise Props!).

Speaking of resins, Archer and Leica Vino are en route to my collection.

Courtesy of Kline Sculptures

Courtesy of Resin Horse Editions on Blogspot

National Model Tack Month (NaMoTaMo) is in April! I have never participated, and aim to make a western saddle this year. I make lots of english tack, and quite frankly western tack terrifies me. To ease myself into tooling, the western saddle will not be tooled, but I will be doing a minimally tooled dressage saddle. 

Photos of the completed sets will be posted as they are finished! 

Marching into March

If you are friends with me on Facebook (Zoe Hatgi) you will have seen my haul of items from Jo-Ann Fabrics and Michael's Craft Store last week.

Pile-O-Stuff

This included a Silhouette Curio (a cutting machine made for balsa wood, leather, and other thicker materials). The machine works GREAT, except when you use it improperly and cut through the sticky mat, not that I would do such a thing *whistling*. So despite breaking my new toy in a rather minor way, I would still strongly recommend the curio, and plan to use it often.

Had to order new mats :( 

 The Musketeer's saddle is coming along, though the rigging is fighting me. As of today at 5PM the saddle has stirrups, and a sweat flap, still no billets or girth, I hope this set will be finalized later.

I've decided to go out on a limb and offer 5 custom saddle spots through Etsy, to be completed on YOUR schedule instead of mine. There are 7 trees sitting in front of me, so I'm hoping to also offer two saddles of my color choices via Etsy. I am really slacking on making tack for Etsy, I hope to change that this month.

As of right now I have one more open Horseisle order, one unstarted trade, and one unstarted commission. If you are interested in being on my commissions list (I offer a 20% discount on all items!) please let me know. These will take lower priority than the Etsy customs, but are still personalized to your liking :)



If you would like to stay in my loop of crafting craziness feel free to request the "ZH Tack Group" on Facebook: ZH Tack Group

I would also like to thank everyone who has liked my ZH Tack page! We are now 100+ strong :)

Out of my comfort zone

I like to think I'm willing to take on challenges.

From Hercules tack

To pegasus tack

To what will be my first medieval-based set

In the early working stages

Hopefully it will end up looking something like this

Here's to new tack adventures, I ought to make another pot of coffee...

I have a problem

I made a stop at Stablemates Inc, my local tack shop and the source of most of my Breyers.

Two new models Empres and EZ To Spot were just calling my name...I couldn't ignore them

Alborozo came in the mail today from Russia, I have never fallen in love with a model on sight, he is a true beauty.

So today I added another three 1:9 scale horses to my collection. Whoops

Family Portrait

This morning I confirmed a trade I am doing with Zoja Makovec, a very talented young artist I had seen resculpt a marwari for NaMoPaiMo. She is getting two sets of medieval tack for turning my customized foundation stallion into an Australian Stock Horse.

Keri is getting two saddles and boots

Kaylee is getting two horseisle sets


At the moment my BreyerFest tack list is as follows...

• x2 Black Dressage Sets
• x1 Brown Dressage Set
• x3 Black Jumping Sets
• x3 Light/Dark Brown Jumping Sets
• x3 Chocolate Jumping Sets
• x2 Chocolate with Color Jumping Sets
• x2 Black with Color Jumping Sets

This totals to be 16 saddle sets. Wish me luck! 

Good thing models don't need stalls

Five, yes FIVE (5) new horses entered the Hatgi household today.

Who knows where they'll be "sleeping" once I need that space again

Good thing they do not need stalls/hay/water/etc.

Valegro, Rhapsody in Black, Paint me a Pepto, and two surprise Stablemates

NaMoPaiMo Party; a meeting of the minds

Howdy!

This last week has been very eventful; a new part time job, school, and most excitingly I got to meet Kristian Beverly of Five Paws Studios!

I'll go through in order of appearance above..

Part time job involves riding horses and teaching lessons when the occasion arises. I am very excited to ride with this barn. They import horses from Canada often, and focus on Jumpers. Maybe I will find my next competition horse with them :)

School is going on, not much to say on the topic other than I am taking full advantage of the printers in the library to print reference images and blog tutorials LOL

Lastly I attended Kristian Beverly's NaMoPaiMo party this weekend, and have been bitten with the customizing bug (and arguably the showing bug!! eek!).

I was first to arrive, Susan Young of Timaru Star II arrived not long after me, and of course when three tack makers are together in the same room, tack seems to bubble up. Susan had brought a bag of tack from her collection, Hannah Bear's alligator saddle, the elk saddle, an Erin Corbette saddle, mostly pieces I had only seen online. I brought three completed saddles and one work in progress, none are my favorite nor my best pieces, but I was happy to have a trained eye to inspect it and give me some feedback. Kristian of course had heaps of tack for us to drool over, her western saddles make me almost want to try one (I still refuse to get the kit I had started back out, I convince myself I'm too busy), and of course her english tack is superb.

I met Susan Young, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Mace, and Maddie Klein, we had a grand time making a mess in Kristian's dedicated craft area which is a room I have decided I need.

A young grey, unnamed as of right now

My reference picture, photo credit to Google (true source unknown)

This makes 3 completed NaMoPaiMo horses, all Trad scale. I have a feeling I will continue to tweak the shading and continue to "play" with his color. 

Now that I have three horses done, I'm going to bring my focus back to tack and finish my custom orders so I can get onto making BreyerFest tack. 

NaMoPaiMo is HERE

It's finally February, or the month better known as NaMoPaiMo (National Model Painting Month), this will be my first year participating.

My Jacy has been prepped, primed, and pastelled too quickly, so I'm headed back to the prepping and priming phases. On January 30th I decided to add one of my two Cortes C models from BreyerFest last year into my project pile. Jacy will be done as a chestnut paint, though it is looking to be more of an apricot dun color now, and Cortes will be a blue roan. 

Cortes as of last night

School started up this week, and time to ride is becoming scarce between tack orders and homework, but I managed to ride Ziggy once, Montana once, and Lily twice. For a six year old Lily has done well with her two weeks off due to a minor tendon injury, and we haven't lost any ground due to it. If finances and her physical soundness permit I will try to take her to USPC championships in Tryon NC this year. 

I bought my ticket to BreyerFest 2018 AND an Alborozo who is my first wishlist horse. I plan to bring some English tack sets (Saddle/Bridle/Pad/Girth/Breastplate) to BreyerFest to be sold for $175 a set. I will bring some halters, bridles, and breastplates as well if you are not in the market for a full set of tack.

I am doing my pricing a bit backwards where the pre-made things are more expensive than the custom orders, but if you want an item now, you can have it for a premium, whereas a custom set may take longer so I will be a bit less rushed and charge less for it. 

My list of tack to be made is shrinking slowly but surely, to find out what I am currently working on, check out my Facebook page under ZHTack! 

Next week will be a bit more intense, but I think with enough coffee I can handle it.