Yet more mini customs!

I'm obviously in the mood for customising at the moment as I seem to be doing nothing but cutting up tiny ponies!

First up is this G2 Pacer - I've always felt rather sorry for this mould as there are so few breeds it could be shown as (as there are relatively few horse breeds that display that kind of lateral gait) that it rarely seems to be customised.

 

I thought it had potential as a trotting horse if I flipped the forelegs round, so after having to buy myself another hacksaw (I lent mine to someone and haven't got it back yet, haha) I set to work.

 I discovered that the bent foreleg was considerably shorter than the other one, so I had to tweak and extend it with a wire before I reattached it.

 

At first I was just going to bend the neck and lower the headset but after a while I thought it'd probably be far easier to just resculpt it entirely, so he was decapitated for science. :P

It was during this time that this stray speck of plastic pinged off and flew straight into my eye, somehow bypassing my glasses entirely.

I spent the next ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror with a variety of small pointy objects, trying to extract it. Luckily it had ended up right in the corner, near the tear duct but kept creeping sideways the more I poked at it which was rather alarming. It came out eventually and I've had no problems but it did make me more aware of what I was doing and I'll definitely be investing in some goggles the next time I'm out as I usually just assume my glasses will be enough to protect my eyes but obviously not! If that had been a bit of glass or metal I could have been in serious trouble! 

A considerable amount of (careful!) sanding with my knockoff dremel later, I reattached the legs on the opposite sides of the horse with white-tac to see how it looked before making the join permanent with superglue and bicarbonate of soda.

 

 

As I've probably mentioned numerous times before, I hate using epoxy as it inevitably gets everywhere and I find it really frustrating to work with, but after accidentally supergluing the horse to my hand earlier on, I decided that I'd have to put up with it rather than my usual glue/bicarb method.

The throatlatch is obviously waaaaay too thick here, and I'll need to do a bit of work once the epoxy has cured but I'm pleased with how well the sculpting style matches.

I think I'll end up having him for some kind of western performance as he's ended up quite chunky and quarter horsey.

I still had loads of milliput left over so I worked on a few side projects to finish it off.

I bought this Schleich Akhal Teke at the Copperfox show, and lopped his head off almost as soon as I got him home. I reset it today a little lower and straighter, although trying to get the distinctive hair texture to match was a little trickier and I'm not really sure if I've managed it or not.

I started this guy years ago - a G2 Shire to some kind of cantering draught. I love the mould's head but not much else, especially that horrible, horrible tail, so that was the first part to go! His left foreleg is entirely new which is why it looks so bad compared to the rest!

This was another old custom I started a while back, a G2 Saddlebred. I really like the mould, but I'm not hugely enamoured with my resculpting here. :/ I really want to do a glued thread version but I can't find another body in my stash even though I know I must have at least one more!

Another custom from the dawn of time is this G1 Silky Sullivan I started way back in 2011.

She's really been through the wars and has had multiple surgeries on her neck, and eventually ended up painted chestnut with a mohair mane and tail, but somehow that never quite worked for me, so I stripped off all the hair the other day and started again with glued thread hair.

This mould has such a lovely face.

She was going to be flaxen chestnut but halfway through pastelling she told me she wanted to be a very dark liver chestnut...oh and she wasn't an Arab any more, she was a Welsh pony!

She's still very much a WIP but I'm really liking the direction she's heading in now.

Also in progress is this Britains Shire, who is well on her way to becoming a very hairy cob.