Pony Painting with my Pals and other Fun Stuff

Friends are great things to have in general, but friends that don't mind driving eight hours across the country to see you and play with ponies are the best.

Tom and Rory drove up all the way from deepest, darkest Gloucestershire a couple of weeks ago to stay, and a fantastic time was had by all. We had the house to ourselves as we'd planned things in advance so that my parents could disappear off to Fife for the week, giving us some space. They had arguably better weather than us but never mind, we made it work!

After talking ourselves hoarse until the wee hours the first night, we spent the first couple of days just mooching around the house, playing games and generally just lounging around because, mood.

Much fun was had stabbing things thanks to Tom's new and crazily good skills with needlefelting! He made these two horses and gave me the chunky suffolk to keep which is just insanely generous as she's SO stinking cute.

I had a go but to be honest I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be. 

It started out looking very catlike...

...but now?  😅

Your guess is as good as mine! 😆

 

We finally made it out of the house to my favourite museum, Kelvingrove, where we said hello to Dippy and had a good look at the temporary exhibition of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. I'd seen them several times by now myself, but just being in the presence of work by my ultimate artistic inspiration never gets old!

 We'd gone here the last time they were up to visit, but we didn't make proper use of the time and got kicked out at closing!

This interactive was supposed to encourage people to make
really profound statements about the evolution of life but we umm..didn't.

A shark's seemingly endless conveyer belt of teeth!

 

We aimed to go to 'Relics', a fantastic little junk/antique shop of wonders not far from the museum but sadly managed to go there the one day of the week it was closed, and this mannequin from a neighbouring shop rather summed up our feelings about that.

Seeing as we couldn't get together in February for NaMoPaiMo, we decided to have our own painting party; something which soon became a nightly ritual once we'd got in from our adventuring. I have a frankly ridiculous quantity of bodies I know I'm probably never going to get round to doing anything with, so much fun was had rifling through box after box of horses in varying states of disarticulation to pick out suitable victims. Honestly, these photos don't do it justice, I've got thousands!

I chose (after some serious nagging from Tom) the two little Shetlands I sculpted waaaaaay back in 2011. They've done nothing but gather dust since I baked them, as I could never decide on a colour to paint them! I ended up not painting the resculpted stablemate though, but a couple of other minis.

We baked cookies and made gingerbread cats to sustain us through the painting process (Tesco mixes ftw!) and honestly, they were amazing if I do say so myself.

We listened to a dizzying array of podcasts and gossiped about hobby drama (because let's face it, who doesn't?) whilst we painted and it was so much fun, I'd highly recommend getting together with a few hobby friends for a painting session like this if you can - it was super chill and a really good way to motivate yourself to paint when the creative juices have run dry. Honestly, even get friends who aren't hobbyists to start painting something and I guarantee you'll have way more fun than you expected!

Sorry Rory, it's traditional to get a really bad photo of you now . 😝

I decided on chestnut for both ponies, with the grumpy mare being a rich liver chestnut and the (former, his bits fell off years ago!) stallion a much more orange shade. They're still not quite finished but I'll get photos up here at some point hopefully.

I usually prime everything first but it was raining outside and I really couldn't be bothered so...

I used acrylics for the most part but added some shading here and there with pastels as the paint was drying much faster than I needed it to for certain areas.

By the end of the week we'd amassed a rather snazzy herd of painted ponies!

My three are the two fat ponies at the back left and the roan mini with an unpainted tail.

Rory painted the two breyer Stablemates and the roan sabino foal, and Tom did everything else.

I had a couple of HOTY bodies knocking about I knew I'd never get round to painting, so Tom fixed that problem for me by painting and then adding them to his own steadily increasing Julip collection. 

(#enabling) I haired them both, and in the case of the stallion, engaged in some accidental dremel related BDSM when I was forced to drill him a new bumhole after the original had somehow become filled with epoxy. 😅😂 We were nearly in tears trying to hold the body and dremel steady, we were laughing so much, especially when the drill bit made a noise at the end - maybe you just had to be there but it was SO FUNNY.😆 (and probably highly unsafe, don't dremel and lol!)

 

They're just so stinking cute!

Rory's little sabino arab foal was ridiculously adorable too and I kinda wanted to keep him. XD

We had planned on visiting Loch Lomond or somewhere equally scenic but the weather was a bit iffy all week, so in the end we stayed closer to home for the most part.

Never change, Glasgow.

A trip to the insanely good and ultra cheap Paesano's Pizza was a must!

One of the days we disappeared off to the Polmadie Car Boot sale, which is apparently the largest indoor boot sale in Scotland, though several stalls had already started packing up by the time we got there so we weren't exactly seeing it at its best.

It was housed in an old warehouse, and next to it were a few really derelict ones that looked like they'd walked out of a horror movie set.

 

There was a LOT of useless tat and the usual assortment of rubbish...

His face is creepy enough but wtf is up with those alien fingers?!

The yellow bear was Large.

Just...no.

...but we didn't come away empty handed!

We scored nearly 50 model horses!

The seller initially wanted £20 and we had the following exchange:

Him: ‘£20 for the lot’ 

Me: ‘Oooft, that’s a bit much, they’re not in great condition and they never cost much to begin with...’

Him: ‘Ah but they’re old though!’ 

Me: ‘No they’re not, I used to collect them in the 90s!’ 

Him: ‘Exactly, they’re old!’ 

Me: 'Hey, I’m from the 90s!’ 

*short pause* 

Him: ‘Oh go on then, £15 for the lot’😆

In fairness we probably still paid a bit too much but I think we did pretty well with all the MBHs as they can often go for a few quid each these days.

We had way too much fun peeling the flockies, which turned out to have some pretty nice sculpting underneath! Apparently this mould is a copy of a Beswick?

Afterwards we drove to Category Is Books, a queer bookshop I've been wanting to visit for ages, but as it's a little out of the way to get to I hadn't been able to until now. It's a tiny little space but has such an open and welcoming vibe, even if the resident shop dog, Moo, was a little grumpy!

There's a dog under there somewhere. XD

We sat in front of a dizzying array of pin badges for what felt like ever, until we could finally make up our mind on what to buy.

 

I added three new ones to my rucksack's collection. :3

I finally got to see some of Pip's excellent pins in person, but they were out of stock when I was there. It's kind of funny how small the world is sometimes; I've known Pip since I first got into Julips yeeeears ago, so to see her products in a local shop is pretty cool!

The final day we spent exploring the Hunterian Museum (the oldest museum in Scotland) and even managed a brief foray into the adjoining Zoology Museum as well. I hadn't been to the Hunterian in literal years, so it was nice to reacquaint myself with the collection. The University of Glasgow campus it neighbours is one of the most gorgeous buildings in the city too.

While the current campus isn't nearly this old, the institution is the fourth oldest university in the English speaking world which is pretty cool.

The Roman collection is especially good.

 

 The main part of the museum has natural history/anthropology at the bottom and medical/anatomy/technology at the top.

 

...shiny rocks...

...and equally shiny beetles.

 

A reproduction of the famous 'Lucy' - I hadn't quite appreciated just how small she was!

I ❤️ these two nerds<3 br="" nerds="" these="" two="">

The anatomy section isn't for the faint of heart, with lots of dissected and deformed body parts. The effect of rickets on the cis female pelvis was particularly sobering.

Thylacine!

The famous 'Bearsden Sharks' are one of my area's claims to fame, and you can see why, they're so bizarre!

The Zoology museum had the best doorknobs!

Finally, just like that it was time for them to head back down south and to be perfectly honest, none of us wanted to acknowledge it at all. We all lingered awkwardly on the doorstep for ages, not actually wanting to part ways, but we did eventually say our goodbyes, vowing to make it a fortnight visit next time so we could do more stuff! 😙

 As they trundled off down the road I began the laborious task of tidying up after all our painting and mohairing - it really does get everywhere! 😂