Merry Christmas! + Breyer horse makeover.

Hello!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas! The thought of eating more turkey seems impossible to me right now😂 Actually, the thought of eating anything seems impossible… I’m not even sure if I could eat chocolate! Which just shows how completely full I am. I can always eat chocolate. But moving on, because all that was really off topic. I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas! Had lots of Chocolate! And didn’t stay up until 2am like me… I’m SOOO tired! Ok! Ok! Back on track FOR REAL NOW. To Challenge myself, and have fun! I decided to redo one of my Breyer horse models. It was a difficult decision to make… I like all my models, and I didn’t want to mess any of them up. But I finally decided to just go ahead and do it! (I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile now!)  I chose Firefly to be my victim…. Firefly willingly volunteered to let me give her a makeover! It was a hard decision… like I said, I didn’t want to mess her up, but out of all my models she was probably the one with the least sentimental value… she is one of the Breyers Classics, so a little smaller then the tradition size. I’ll put some pictures of her before her makeover began, I believe she came in a set with a Breyer book… she was a blue roan mustang Filly☺️

 

 

So as you can see, she isn’t standing square, and her head is up and looking off to the left. Her mane is also… blowing in the wind? And her tail is fairly small… none of those were a problem, but as I want her to be a hunter pony, they don’t exactly work. So with the help of a heat gun (similar to Thomas’s Ray of Apollo😉 if you haven’t read Rachel Caines Great Library series then please don’t pay attention to me😅 and GO READ IT.) and Cold water, I successfully burned the plastic on Fireflys leg… ummm… good job Maren…🤦🏼‍♀️ But with the help of the heat gun,(Ray of Apollo😁) Cold water, ANNDD my Sister, (plus a Dremel to sand the bubbley plastic off) Firefly is now standing square on her two front legs, her neck is arched and she has her head tucked under very cutely. Also her head and neck are straight. No more looking off into to distance! Unfortunately her neck got bend quite badly… and there was some large dents/holes in it… after sanding it with the Dremel it turned out flat-er…? Here’s a picture…(the little white spot on her leg is where I had to sand the paint/burnt plastic off.)

 

This is where the plastic got burnt on her leg… 😣(before I sanded it off)

after I’d flattened out her neck as much as possible with the Dremel I took some air-Hardening clay and mixed it with a bit of water, just enough that the clay softens. The I filled in the holes and made her neck smoother.

Once her neck had dried I set to work on her right front leg. When me and my sister had been adjusting it, (meaning- my sister adjusting while I sat beside her eating chocolate and pretending that I was helping…) we figured out that her right front leg was shorter then all the other three legs…? So we tried to pull it longer… the result wasn’t quite what we were hoping for. Her leg wasn’t really any longer but it was now narrower 😦 I fixed both those problems with some more air-hardening clay. I added it to her leg, wrapping it around before smoothing out and making into the proper leg shape. And for the hoof problem I sanded it down just I little bit, just so that it was flat,  (I used an emery board) then added clay on the bottom building it up until it was even with the other legs. Her knees are the same height, so I didn’t have to worry so much about confirmation when I added the extra clay to her hoof.

After that was done, I moved on to the tail. As I said before, her tail was pretty small/short. Not necessarily a problem, but I wanted her to have a big tail😁 I used some more air-hardening clay, it took a couple layers but I finally got it how I wanted it! I used a stiff paintbrush to get the detail of the hair, and it worked ok. I tried to give her tail a “braided” look… it kinda worked? Not quite how I was hoping but it looks ok…

so yeah, not quite how I was hopeing… but not that bad!? after the tail dried… she fell off the table onto the floor… it was a accident. I didn’t mean to drop her… but my cat pushed a glass of milk over and I reached to grab it, then knocked pony off the table. 😦 she unfortunately broke one of her ears… it had already been broken/fixed once before so I knew how to do it. using baking soda + super glue. first I applied the super glue to her ear then dipped it in a small bowl with the baking soda, this took some time. I *tried*to do it at the same time as making some carmel sauce… I ended up just burning the sauce. I would not recommend. But here’s a picture of her ear once I was done…

So… it’s clearly quite lumpy. And not near done. and pretty ugly… but it can be fixed. the most difficult part is finding a metal emery board… once that is found you can use it to file the ear into shape. it’s time consuming, sure, but it’s worth it. once your done and the ear is done you should not be able to tell that the ear was once broken! MWAHAHAHA!!

so after allllllll the super glue had dried and I’d filed the ear in a MAGNIFICENT shape. I moved in towards the mane… for this, I once again used air-hardening clay! I did the forelock first, you could do the mane first if you prefer though… but I rolled out the clay into a snake shape, then stuck it on her head. once it was stuck on there, I brushed it into the right look/shape I wanted!! I had the clay ”snake” go back until about the spot her bridal path would end, and I used a brush, jabbing downwards to achieve the look of short hair on the bridle path. for her forelock I made it braided :-))) same method as the tail, going back and forth with a paint brush (no paint on it!) and a couple clay things, slimier to a butter cutter…?

 

showing about how far my clay snake went back…

 

 

before I shaped it,                                                    and after…

 

before I shaped it,

after I shaped it…

sooooo… not perfect… but… it is my first time… so I’m pretty happy???

but I’m telling you, the mane… IS FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE. I spend about FIVE hours on that mane. it. was. impossible. I’m not even going to tell you how I did it. it took to long. and I’m not describing. no. way. but I will give you a picture. because I’m actually somewhat happy with how it turned out. but I’m not happy with how long it took. oh, but it turns out that I took some pictures of the WAY TOO LONG process, so you will get those!

ok! time the pictures of the finished product! well… I still have to paint, etc etc, but all the re-modeling work is done! and she’s ready to get a coat a primer!!

 

so that’s all for now! I still have to get a coat of primer on her… but once that’s done I’ll get some pictures of her painted up and everything, and I’ll post them!

once again, hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and have a great new year!