Studio Sale: Friday the Pony

 

Friday the Pony is coming and he has plenty of gifts for both you and your friends!

Watch for him, for he's only here from November 26 to December 5th; and shipping will be from Dec. 6th to Dec. 10th.

Everything would be conducted from the studio FB page here.

And then the studio would be closed for Christmas from Dec. 11 to Jan. 10th.

Here's a brief list of what would be available for sale when he comes:

~Custom Model Horses (1 WD, 4 SM, & 6 MW)

~Props (Haynets, Pole Bending sets, Mini Bubble Mailers, Fantasy-Style Side Tables, Doll-size Toy Chests, & Sleigh Ride Accessories for Dolls)

~Keychains

~Dice Sets (3)

~ Small Flatwork Paintings

Again, watch for him and get what you need before he's gone 'til next year!

Hard Competition

 Breyerfest Open Photo Show, Friday, July 16, 2021

Yes, competition can get extremely hard when there's hundreds and thousands of people entering when presented as a photo show. No matter how many models you enter, there's someone else with tons of models who also has a chance in winning something as well. So, the possibilities of winning a lot of placings is rather quite slim, unless you entered all classes with a small number of entries (which isn't a bad tactic).

I still did have some placings regardless. One thing for sure, is that I was more relaxed about getting photos together. I remember last year scrambling trying to re-take pictures accordingly to Breyerfest's standards. But once I saw the other entries from people who primarily photo show - I was like, "Oh, I could have just used my regular photos." So, that's what I did this year and it was much better.

Anyways, here they are:

Enjoy!

Pinkalicious

Manager's Fun Class: Horse of a Different Color!

5th place

(I thought her placing was actually quite funny - because the color for 5th place is pink and she is literally hot pink!)

Xavier

Collectibility OF TR/CL: Animals: Unicorns

9th place

Stormy

Foal: OF Pony: TR RR

10th place

(I was surprised that he did place. New photo. And usually entered in a sea of Stormys).

Ramona

Foal: Mini OF: Gaited

Honorable Mention

(I could totally see her getting Honorable Mention. She photographs remarkably well, so then she places well, too. She was the only Mini Whinnie foal who received something).

Sumatra

Mini OF: Collectibility: Fantasy

9th place

Update: The Ribbons have Arrived! Aug. 9, 2021

The Fun Class Paper Flat Ribbon arrived a week or so after Breyerfest, but it's only fair to have Pinkalicious included in the lineup (and to show her intense pinkness with her awesome homemade pink ribbon!). Either way, here they all are. I guess there's no physical award for Honorable Mentions (Ramona), but that's OK. I'm still surprised that Stormy placed at all due to the popularity of the Misty and Stormy models. Good job little buddy!

Winter Pony Bytes Photo Show Results

At the beginning of the month, there was a new paid+prize photo show that was being advertised on one of the Facebook groups I follow. The Winter Pony Bytes Photo Show uses a new platform that is specifically programed for hosting model horse photo shows. When I first read about it, I assumed that the platform would be like SmugMug, another great platform for photo shows. So out of curiosity, FOMO, and it being a prize base show - I entered it. And I could tell you this:

It was not what I had expected.

Due to the fact that they were still testing the trafficking of users in a small time frame on the site - we were allowed to upload pictures for only two days. Completely understandable.

It took me about an hour to enter in my photos for each division (and I didn't even enter every single class!)

It was very similar to my experience with Breyerfest:

Lots of fun prep = quick to burnout

Throughout uploading all my photos, I kept thinking, "what was I thinking?!"

I did not have time for this.

I had other things I wanted to get done.

I was needed elsewhere in the house.

So, I tried to get it ALL done in one day.

Let's just get it all over with it.

Then I get an email from one of the hosts the next day asking about my formatting (I followed their instructional photo example to a "T") and if I was going for points.

Unfortunately, I haven't done many shows with points, so I don't really understand them. In my weird logic, going for points seems like that's how you get a higher chance at winning anything. I did find out, however, pointsless entries can still place in the champions round. They still mean nothing to me. Just give me the ribbon, because that's more rewarding for me.

And now the results.

Mares In Black Division

(to be honest, whenever I see the MIB sign/whatever it's called, I think of the Men In Black movie with Will Smith. I really wanted to do a scene for one of the classes of standing mares with "suites," "ties," and "sunglasses" to be the secret agents from Men in Black. Unfortunately, I don't have  any mares who would fit the idea).

Whole Mood Mares

Blue Moon and Maybelline having a dispute

Received 1st in the class

Aaannddd....for being a pointsless entry...

received Reserve for CM/AR

As you all already know, Maybelline (right) is a vintage SM, not a CM.

Performing Mares

Paint Me A Pepto and Jenny competing in the speed game of Bribe Your Horse

Received 5th

The Barn Division

(this was a little hard to do, since I do not own a barn. I do have the arena panel and ways to make the barnyard, though).

Corral Comedy

Ice Cream Kisses

Received 5th

Naughty Ponies

Unsupervised Ponies and Foals Invading an Unsupervised Bake Sale

Received 3rd

The Greyt Grey Challenge

(thankfully, I have lots of Greys!)

Grey Performance

Brighty's Trick Training

Reveived 4th

Not-A-Horse Grey

Blossom

Received 5th

Winter Fantasy and Animal Fun

(between the Grey division and this division, there are a LOT of entries. Most of my stress level was with these two - in the uploading part, that is).

Wings

Sumatra

Received 5th

OF Not-Unicorn

Numinor

Received 2nd

OF Unicorn

Xavier

Received 4th

Pony Bytes was OK, but I think I'm going to stick with MEPSA, Facebook, and SmugMug for now. There's less stress with those.

New Fence

 This past couple of weeks, I have been working on making a pasture fence for photographing my model horses. There were a guarantee number of trials and errors, but I got through it, and figured out the best possible solution. Thankfully, we have heap loads of sticks out back!

I ended up making a Traditional set, a Stablemate set, and a Mini Whinnie set. Eventually, I'm going to make a set for both Classic and Paddock Pals (and maybe Wind Dancers, too...?)

So far, so good.

Though, I do need to make another "panel" for Traditional, since both "Bandit" and "Pharoah" were cutting it close on both sides.

Oh! So, tiny!!

There's still some areas where I need to add more brush, but believe it or not - all of these are held together with hot glue gun!

The fences even did well when I tried portraits!

Oh, yeah, and I figured out that I don't need a Macro Lens for my Canon. Instead, I literally placed the camera on the table at the appropriate distance away from the little guys and snapped the picture with very little peering through the viewfinder. This method so totally worked!!!

The one thing about the fences is that I couldn't get them to interlock very well since their base are super large popsicle sticks. I'm not done with them yet - they still need more foliage (I'm using the moss for the time being here).

On the second photoshoot, I knew it was supposed to snow.....but.....I was more focused on the fact that it's overcast, which is PERFECT for photographing model horses (especially Glossies!)

Well, it snowed on me.

Got some good pictures.

And some that needed the snow shook off of the grass mat, due to disappearing white feet.

Ah, much better!

I was supposed to get pictures of some more Mini Whinnies and Stablemates, but my fingers were practically frozen even though I had gloves on. It was also kind of tiring because of the cold. Oh, well, I'll get those pictures another day.

Field of Dolls Photo Show

 I wasn't sure if I going to be able to enter Anne Field's photo show.

I did, however, donate a few homemade props - I will write a post about those later.

But in the end, I was able to put together some entries and enter the show.

The results came in today.

Anne live streamed the door prizes (which were done by randomly pulling a name out of a cauldron - great idea!) and the Grand and Reserve Champions. She later emailed out the full results a few hours later. The show was triple judged.

I mostly entered in the Speciality classes, but I did have some for Other Performance as well. Here are all the entries I did:

Other Performance:

Brighty Trick Training

No, this one didn't place 

(though, this photo still does pretty well in other photo shows lately).

This one didn't either - in-fact, none of the Other Performance entries placed. The doll's the problem, but it was good to test out the Bribe Your Horse Speed Game. This one is of an eager Paint Me A Pepto whipping around the cone in pursuit of the corn in the bucket!

In that same speed game, there are horses who are food motivated....and then there's the ones who are not - like Mato Ska, in this case.

Speciality/Scene

Food

Judged by Anne Field

I knew that Anne would like this one!

Unsupervised Ponies and Foals received 4th place!

Miniatures

This one I had taken for Jennifer Buxton's Pandemic Performance Panorama.

None of my entries for Miniatures placed.

My original plan was to have one of my dolls pulling the wagon, but only crop part of her in the photo and centering on the models.

What happened?

I couldn't get her to stand, the handle wasn't long enough, and it was cold and a little breezy.

Funny

I was going to have this one in Food, but I realized that Arrow is already the star of my other Food entry. It could have been better - I was having trouble with angle.

He did not place.

Other Scene

(my specialty!)

Partly Cloudy and Emerald Isle

Did not place

Xavier

(his forelock is reflecting my hot pink jacket)

Did not place

Mato Ska

Did not place

Encore

Did not place

Aurelius

Did not place

(that makes sense, a judge had told me that they would rather see the horse from the light side - but, I entered it anyway)

This photo is from a few years ago, for a Breyer Photo Contest (it placed 3rd). I thought I'd pull it out and put it in a scene class since performance photos need to be from the side.

Judged by Marisa Spence

Paint Me A Pepto

6th place

Buster Baxter

Did not place

Kyla

Did not place

Drizzle

Did not place

Santiago

Did not place

Sgt. Reckless

Did not place

That was a lot of fun!

Anne is going to do another show in April, so I better start prepping!

Silver Star Model Horse Photo Show Sept. Results

 The rest of the results finally came in. I'm assuming that the judge was super busy, so everything was two classes a day (roughly). I was thinking of not writing a post on the results, but then I noticed at the end of the previous post I had said that I would post the results sometime that week. Oh, well, here it is anyway.

This month's theme was Color.

Lionheart placed 3rd in Appaloosa Patterns.

Isabella placed 3rd in the Black coloring class.

Kyla is really a Grey foal coat with goggles (grey hairs around the eyes) and a grey muzzle. However, I am still uncertain as to WHERE to enter her when it comes to the Color Divisions. So, for this show, I entered her in her base color class: Chestnut. She placed 3rd.

Feldspar placed 3rd in the Dun/Dunskin/Grullo(a) class.

WOW! Four 3rd places. Had to count them, because I thought I was sounding like a broken record with all of those 3rd places. I didn't make any of this up either.

Fantasia placed 1st in Grey.

Numinor placed 1st in Other Color. (This class was very open-ended. I didn't know if it was for Fantasy, Decorator, or other natural colors that didn't have a proper class. Most ended up being the unrealistic colors).

Encore placed 2nd in Palomino.

Ezio Trot de Favacho placed 6th in Pinto patterns.

Wasaka placed 4th in the Roan class.