I just spent five days in Northern Ontario, visiting my best friend! During that time I forced her to walk… a lot! But that was fine, because we were trying (in vain) to kick butt at a Workweek Hustle Challenge with Fitbit.
So since we were doing a lot of walking, I decided I’d do some birding. In the end, I took pictures of fifteen unique species of bird. Of those, I had never before taken pictures of 11 of those species.
So without further ado, here are my birding results. 🙂
I was at Value Village a few months back and came upon two Barbie horses. They had the extra long flowing manes and tails that typically are found on the more cartoonish toy horses out there, and they had big starry eyes, just like Barbie.
But I studied them and wondered if perhaps they would make for realistic horses if painted properly.
The “real” hair was also in decent condition, and they were relatively cheap, so I picked them up.
I decided to paint the pink one, trying to aim for a Palomino look.
I didn’t stop to document this paint job.
However, I am still always left impressed by how different a model horse looks between almost finished and then painting the eyes and hooves. A horse looks incomplete before those small finishing touches.
I was actually quite impressed by what the Barbie horse turned into. Sure, the pose the horse is in is a bit over the top, with exaggerated high steps and sever angles, but overall, this horse actually looks like a horse, particularly the head.
I’m rather proud of the nose. 🙂
The horse that started it all for me (the first REAL horse, not some fictional horse) was and still is Man O’War.
I’ve owned a Traditional Breyer Man O’War for a few years now but was never happy with it. They did a pretty lazy job with Man O’War’s blaze.
So when I got my hands on a second Man O’War, I decided to repaint it and keep the two models side by side, so people can see the difference.
I unfortunately did not take pictures during the repainting but do have quite a few of the completed horse.
Everyone meet Corwynt, also known as Taurie. Taurie belongs to me good friend Beth, and boy is he an amazing and talented little guy. He is a Welsh Canadian cross.
I found a beautiful classic Breyer Haflinger mare that happened to have a lot of Taurie’s bodily and facial features. So I decided I had to make Taurie!
I prepared the model for painting. She looked really impressive all dressed up in white.
I managed to mix a beautiful bay brown quite easily and I was soon plugging away at making Taurie.
The finished results made me quite happy. I plan on giving this model to Beth as a gift.
Well, apparently the birds are just loving my seeds.
I have identified two new kinds of finch. A Pine Siskin and a Common Redpoll. According to an Ottawa area checklist, both birds are uncommon for this area at this time of year!
At the beginning of winter, I bought a brand new bird feeder. I was super stoked because it claimed squirrels and larger animals couldn’t eat from it. If a squirrel tried to, its own weight would slam the feeder doors shut. Yay!
So I bought some nyger seed and put it up. For two months no one touched my seeds. Nothing.
So I went out and bought a new seed mix that had peanuts and black sunflower seeds. Now that should entice some birds!
Sadly, no birds showed up for that either!
Instead, I got a squirrel.
That’s right. The squirrel proof bird feeder was not actually squirrel proof. Although in its defense, the squirrel that decided my seeds were delicious was a small red quirrel, about half the size of a bigger, black squirrel.
Ever since, the damn squirrel has been eating all my seeds. And yelling. A lot. That is the angriest brat of a squirrel I have ever seen. And he’s not scared either. He’ll see me walking home and sit on top of my feeder and yell at me. Grr.
Yesterday evening though, I saw something amazing. For the first time, I saw a bird at my bird feeder. It was a female cardinal!
And today, as I returned from work, I spotted four black squirrels (which we haven’t seen pretty much all winter) and a dozen little birds. The squirrels were under the feeder while the birds were throwing them a meal.
I haven’t heard a peep out of the red squirrel for a few days, come to think of it. And he was nowhere in site while the other animals feasted today.
In any case, I managed to get a shot of one little birdie. I think this is a female House Finch, but don’t quote me. I have a hard time identifying the little birds.
Big Boss still remains my favourite custom paint job so far.
You see, Big Boss isn’t a Breyer model. In fact, he’s a cheap toy that has a beautiful body but a horrid face. One nostril is twice the size of the other. I found two of these vintage plastic toys at a thrift store. They were dressed up in broken harnesses. I brought them home and ripped the harness off the first horse and used it to fix the harness on the second.
At this point I decided that perhaps I could paint the first horse. Just because it wasn’t a GOOD model doesn’t mean I couldn’t try to make it beautiful.
Unfortunately, when I removed the harness I discovered the glue they had used had actually RUINED the plastic! So I got a piece of sandpaper and got down to business.
Bonus: See the little ribbon? It was completely hidden by the collar!
After I had sanded him down as good as I could, it was time to paint him a base white.
I ended up mixing a beautiful, rich dark brown to make this horse a bay. I got right into painting him.
Before long, I had finished painting the brown bay.
Now, I don’t really know any Clydesdales personally, so I turned to Google to find a suitable model. I fashioned Big Boss after the below picture, but the name Big Boss is my own.
Once I had finished the black points, I moved on to the white stockings. The white points on this horse is what makes me ever so happy. I am extremely satisfied with the stockings and blaze on Big Boss.
Here is the finished model.
So I went a bit bid-happy on eBay leading up to Christmas, knowing that I wanted to paint larger Breyer model horses. The only problem was that shipping to Canada is ridiculously expensive these days, what with our crappy dollar.
However, I had something wonderful at my disposal. I have a friend in Florida and I was planning on visiting her in the new year.
So when I won auction after auction, I sent them all to my friend. Shipping within the US is a lot easier on my wallet, and I ended up wrapping all the horses in my clothes for my return trip. Bonus: this also stopped me from being able to spend too much money on souvenirs.
While I had a mini-herd of Breyer horses, I had no access to them.
I went on Kijiji and found a decent Breyer model for sale in Toronto. The lady was kind enough to take Paypal and sent him to me via the mail. I received a Sham mold, painted as Best Choice, Arabian. He would have been made in 1997.
I once knew a horse that was, at least part, Arabian. His name was Blue. So I decided I’d try to paint Blue for my first Traditional size horse.
It was time to say goodbye to the first used Breyer horse I had purchased.
It didn’t take too long before I had prepped Sham so that he was ready to be painted.
You know what though? Mixing paint to get a chestnut colour was super hard. I wasn’t happy. At all.
Near the end, I realized I was missing yellow in my paint mixture. It was confusing because chestnut is a reddish brown, but there it was… clearly, I had needed yellow all along.
Truth be told, I’m still not happy with Blue. He could be a better colour. But he was the first one I had completed, and that was a feat all in itself.
A few months back, sometime before Christmas, I picked up a blind packaged Paint-Your-Own Breyer Stablemate. It came with one blank Stablemate horse with a set of three paint colours to… paint your own Stablemate!
I loved painting it so much that I went back and bought the package that included all five models.
I used three of these models to create three horses that I knew. Zack, Morgan (now known as Trevor), and Laney.
The other two horses ended up becoming “Misty” and “Latcho Drom”.
These five Stablemates opened up a new world for me, as I began to search and realize that custom model horse painting is a very big thing.
Since then, I have begun to collect Traditional and Classic size Breyer horses, as well as knock off horses. The majority of these horses are intended to be customized.
I will document these customizations here.
Unbridled Perspective 