It's about time I'd write a post about the very, first live model horse show I had attended back in....um.....September! The nice thing about this particular show was that it was in Farmington, UT - which is much closer to little o'l Cache Valley than previous ones in Southern Utah. Either way, it was very exciting planning who I was bringing....
and spending the entire month sewing Pony Pouches (to be honest, I really have no idea how many I made!)
Poor Xavier looks like he has a turban. It's really an extra strip of polar fleece from the pony pouches wrapped around his horn for protection. I brought two other unicorns (a classic foal and a stablemate), but they weren't able to see like Xavier here.
I wish I had gotten more pictures of everyone else's collections to show the rest of my family that "I'm not the only one who has a huge herd of model horses." In fact, even though I had brought just over 40 horses - there were people there with possibly over 100! And that was usually a good mix between the big guys and the little ones.
It was slow for most of the morning. I was starting to get a little discouraged when none of my horses were placing. I did find out that I should have put Snow Princess in the Decorators division due to the metallic, blue highlights in her mane and tail - making her not realistic!
Once the Fun Classes started, hope of placing in something came back in the form of prizes. Moana (left) won a unicorn coin purse and Xavier (right) won a unicorn rubber ducky??? Don't ask.
This was the Mini Fantasy Fun Class. Apparently, I was the only one with a Wind Dancer....going up against the current trend of unicorns. That's OK, it was worth a try. One of the main reasons I had insisted on attending, was meeting other collectors and finding out if any of them lived near me. In turn, I found out that the girl on the right lives in Cache Valley, too.
Now, when I saw the Mare & Foal/Family class listed, I knew I just had to enter my entire Spirit* Family that I had collected over the years starting with the two Plush Spirit and Rain; originally bought at Blockbuster years ago after the movie came out. The lineup starts with Spirit's parents: Strider and Esperanza. Next is Spirit and Rain with their two kids: Swirl (Bay Frame Overo) and Wild (Buckskin). Then it crosses over to Wild's family, her mate: Silver (Black) and foal: Mary Jane (Palomino). Now it's Rain's side of the family, starting with her twin sister, Raindrop and her mate: Wild Spirit (standing Dunskin) and their foal: Lightning Bolt (standing Buckskin Pinto). Then there's Rose's family (Rose is Rain's aunt), Rainbow and her daughters: Daisy Mae (running Buckskin Pinto foal) and Montana (running Dunskin). Ending with Montana and her mate: Chestnut (Tobiano) with their foal: Lightning (Black Tobiano). Yes, that's the ENTIRE family!
Then SURPRISE!!! Another judge had gifted the newest edition to the family (I ended up calling him: Free Spirit; and he's Spirit's* cousin who no one knows where he got all the "big" genes).
I literally didn't expect that kind of a surprise! One of the other collectors had told me that it was because of "shear volume." Though, what I found even more funny, was that they had a Spirit model on hand as a prize!
I originally was going to include Strider's adopted family with the lineup, but I had already used up a ton of table space with the direct family. So, the Grand Champion twins, Brown Tyke and Cupid, ended up in the Most Loved class. They didn't win anything, but by the way, they were my very first toy horses that I could remember!
I think this was apart of the Resin Division. Yes, that's a tiny horse standing next to that humongous rosette!
Here's another crazy mini! Highly detailed, but not mine.
This was the Pony class in the Customs Division. One of the things I made sure I did with each of my customs, was ask the judge for explanation on placings and advice for the future. Blending on both the sculpting level and the painting level were the major biggies. But, the one thing she did say, was that she had never seen this kind of custom before. She was also totally convinced that Alistair (Mushroom: right) was Breyer Classic Merrylegs underneath all that "hair." He's not. In fact, he's mirror image to Merrylegs (I'll write about the comparison in another post). But he's sculpted from Breyer's Traditional Shetland Pony.
This is NiConi. She was one of the judges and totally fell in love with Merida, my Zebra Dun Shetland Pony custom. Merida is not for sale and I would be making more fuzzy ponies in the future.
I did bring some of my "to be for sale" pieces. So far, Aster was the only one who placed in his class.
This little guy was customized and owned by Shannon Robinson. She really has a knack for sculpting Pegasus wings.
Here's Snowfire with his placing. He was quite a trooper when I got him. His right hindleg was majorly bowed outward (a factory fault) and he couldn't stand properly. The nice thing about being a customizer is that you have all the tools for fixing these kind of faults.
Banks Vanilla got 4th place in her class, too!
Some of the perks of going to a live show were raffle prizes, door prizes, silent auctions, and other horsey goodies that collectors were selling at their tables. I wasn't successful with the raffle prizes, but I did get my very first Medallion with the silent auction (I still don't know what color I'm going to paint him). Those who had full entries got a goody bag of fun horsey things (I did!). The rest were a good mix between OF models and bodies for customs......plus my very first Peter Stone model horse!
Spirit, you really earned that ribbon, by the way!
That was too much fun! I can't wait until the next one!
