Friday 29 July 2011

The EA Equestrian Tack Room

After months of procrastinating and 'I'll get round to it later'-ing, my tack room is finally complete!
I still need to make a saddle for Pirate and sort out tack for some of the non riding school horses but yeah, here it is! I used a doll's house roombox which can technically be lit as all the wiring's done - I just need to find a transformer and a pluggy thing I think and that little lamp will light up nicely.

Tack Room

Tack Room

Tack Room

Tack Room

Each horse has their own saddle rack (made from Magnum ice cream sticks cut in half) with a little name tag at the top so they get put back in the right places after lessons. I wanted to put some hooks underneath for the bridles but it would have ended up far too cluttered so you'll just have to imagine a couple of rows of bridles hanging on the wall you can't see! XD
I thought the headcollars could go on the ends of the racks though to add a bit of interest.

Tack Room

Tack Room

Maisie's deer stalking saddle isn't used very often so is stored up high to keep it out of the way.

Tack Room

There's a rack for drying saddlecloths and numnahs on, a massive grooming kit, two boxes full of spare headcollars and leadropes, spare browbands and straps in the corner and of course, a box to stand on if you can't reach the top saddles. XD

Tack Room

Tack Room

The little bottle of saddle soap is one of my favourite accessories and it didn't cost me a penny! It's just a lid from an old blue pen with a label from a tack catalogue glued on. The green 'trug' is another nifty little cheat - I bought a packet of silicone cupcake cases from a supermarket for a couple of pounds and with handles cut out of the sides doesn't it look good?

Tack Room

Some more products:

Tack Room

The 'Gallop' and 'Alvahorse' brand bottles are cheap doll's house wine bottles trimmed to size with painted on lids, the white bottle next to them was originally a wooden milk bottle from a job lot of miniatures and the teatree shampoo is a superglue lid trimmed to size. The Hibiscrub container was an oil canister thing I bought from a doll's house fair and I'm not sure where the blue spray thing came from but I think it's from the Grand Champions range or something similar. The clear bottle on the second shelf was actually part of a medicinal eyedrop thing that I salvaged and cleaned out. (waste not! :P) The two little black tubs next to it are probably my favourites - nothing more than those little stoppers you get at the bottom of ballpoint pens to stop the ink tube coming out! The things on the right are the tops of the wine bottles but I thought they looked like interesting little bottles in themselves.

Tack Room

Wonky shelves come as standard! XD The noticeboard is just a rectangle of felt with some cocktail stick edging.

Tack Room

The supplement bottle on the left and rug cleaner on the right are doll's house milk bottles, the taller packet on the left, between them was from a Barbie Vet playset that I had as a kid - I kept it on as I just knew it would come in handy one day! The hoof oil containers are Bostik glue lids and the Waterstop stuff is another wine bottle. The humane twitch sitting on the left is nothing more than a bit of wire bent into shape and then painted. :)

Organisation is paramount at EAE; with so many people on the yard at once it's so easy for things to get mixed up, hence all the labels.

Tack Room

Tack Room

Tack Room

The ponies' tack is helpfully closer to the ground as more often than not, their riders are too!

Tack Room

Anyway, that's it - any questions/comments etc go to the usual place and are very much appreciated! :D