Audiobooks

I know that sitting and making tack for hours can be a bit boring so I usually listen to an audiobook while I work. This is so fun and I just wanted to share with you how I borrow books. In my county there is an app called Libby. On this app you can borrow tons of books and audiobooks. All you need is a library card.

This is all the books that I have borrowed. You can even download a book to read/ listen to when there is no wifi. 

  

    These are some of the books that you can borrow, but some books need to be placed on hold. I usually place all the books that I want on hold, this way books slowly become available to me.

        If you don't live in Fairfax County, i'm sure that your local library has something like this. I think that audiobooks make tack making so much more fun!

    

 

New Snaffle Bride

    Hello! Today I finished this snaffle bridle. I think that it came out perfect! With just a few adjustments it should fit any traditional sized Breyer horse.     

    For this bridle I added the crimp covers to replicate a bit. This is so easy to do and it makes the bit look so much better! 

Now I am just lacing the reins. This takes so long, but i'm sure that it's going to look great. 

Look at the saddle that is going to go with the bridle.
It is so fun to look at my old posts and see my progress!

     This is the bottom of the saddle I even wrote the date.

Saddle in Progress

    I am working on making  a new saddle pattern. My old one was just so bulky, and I wanted to fix that. I think that it was the saddle tree that I had to change. Today I made the saddle flaps with knee rolls. This time I tried to just stick knee rolls directly onto the saddle flaps. This surprisingly worked really well.

Here is one of my halter packaged and ready to be sold!

    Look at what my guinea pigs did yesterday! I gave them a box of hay, but they decided to eat the box and pee on the hay. Now they want new hay and I have to clean it all up.

 

Online School

     As you might know I will soon be starting online school, so I just wanted to show you my soon- to- be classroom. I need quiet so my mom set up my study desk upstairs. My school gave all students computers, so now I have my own.

    One positive, is that I will be studying in my workroom. So I will probably be doing tack while I am on break. It is so cool how fast a room can get so dirty!

 

    Oh and by the way look at this new exact knife set that came today. I comes with 3 exact knives and lots of sharp blades. It even came with this handy cutting board. Although it is a bit small... it works perfectly for tiny tack.

    If you are wondering why my fingers are brown/ orange, it it because my dying glove ripped again! I should really buy some better plastic gloves....

Shop Restock

    Hello! Tomorrow I will probably restock my shop with my new halters! I just wanted to let you guys know what I will be selling before hand. First I have multi colored paracord halters.  Now that I bought in scale hooks the lead rope and snap looks much better.

    

        The other halter, is basically exactly the same except it has no paracording.

    I now have leather halters! I thought that these would be harder to make, but is much MUCH easier! Leather sticks together really well and fast. Just make sure to skive the ends to reduce bulk. So if you are considering leather halters just make it, it is so easy.

So overall I think that my halters have really improved over the months of quarantine! School is starting up again, so thats a bummer. But since it is online I can still have time to make tack, just maybe not as much. So stay tuned!

Halters, Patterns, and a Dog Friend

    Todays post will be about just little things I did today. First I want to tell you about the tool below. It is called a mini pounce wheel and I use it ALL THE TIME! It makes little stitch marks along the edge of your tack. The mini stitch marks really bring your tack to the next level, so if you don't have this tool I recommend getting one. I bought mine off of Rio Rondo for 9.80 dollars.

    This tool helps to add the little details such as in my halter that I'm making. I know that it might be hard to see but I added a line of stitches along the sides. I will probably show a whole other tutorial on how to use this tool, so keep on the lookout! 

    The pattern for my saddle pattern was just a bit too bulky, so today I also tried tomato a new pattern from scratch. This is actually not as hard as it seems.  You just have to know the saddle parts and what a saddle looks like. I definitely looked at many reference photos make sure that it's in scale.

    So now I'm working on that, I hope that this time it comes out less bulky. Maybe I just have to skiver it better.

In case you are wondering, the dog in the background is my dog Benji. These days because I'm stuck in the house I have been working on training Benji. This has resulted in him following me all around the house.

    I love it because he makes me so happy and keeps me company. He mostly just sleeps though... but I still love him!

 

Rio Rondo Hardware

    My package from Rio Rondo came today! how does it keep on getting bigger every order? Well, I thought that I would talk about some of the hardware. These are all of my buckles. I recommend buying A LOT (Buckles get used up fast).You also have to buy different sizes to fit your leather lace. The perfect fit is always the best but larger is better than smaller! You can make buckles out of wire and some pliers, but that never comes out looking as good as these buckles do.

    For my halter hardware, I bought some halter pieces and hooks. For the halter pieces you can use a jump ring, but if you use these your hater looks much more realistic. Usually I use a lobster clasp for my lead ropes, but I wanted to try out these hooks. The lobster clasps looked way to big and bulky, these hooks look way more in scale.

    Believe it or not, I did not have any tacky wax up until this time. In case you are wondering, tacky wax is a sticky wax that model horse collectors use to stick tack on a model horse. Up until now I have been using my... braces wax. It is almost the same thing, but I found it to be much less sticky, so I just got some real tacky wax. 

    Now stirrups. These pewter stirrups are probably the most expensive thing that goes on a saddle. They cost about 7 dollars a pair, and that adds up! But I still buy them because how can you have a saddle without good looking stirrups? I am working on learning to cast my own, but until now I still buy them. Do you think I should make mine out of real pewter or resin?

Now that is all that got. I definitely recommend Rio Rondo for your tack supplies. It is a great website with practically everything you need to make tack. And that's it! Look how my guinea pigs, Lily and Cindy ate dinner yesterday, SO CUTE!!! ( They almost never touch each other.)

 

Oreo Cake

    The other day it was my grandpa's birthday. My mom gave Max and I the challenge to make him an Oreo cake. First an Oreo cake needs, Oreos! I blended them into powder in the blender.

You can also just smash them in a bag, like what Max did. Be carful that the bag does not poop open and explode.

Now comes the fun part, you have to take the cake, we did one chocolate and one vanilla. This way when you cut into it there are two colors.

I wanted to make out own frosting, but that never turns out well, so we used some store bought buttercream.

I piped around the edge...

until I had a nice ring of frosting.

On the inside we added Oreos to add some crunch.

I wish I had more pictures  of this, but then we stacked the chocolate cake on top, covered it with frosting, and last but not least covered it with Oreo crumbs and cookies. 

It was overall so much fun making this cake and one of my best yet! I don't really know how it tasted ( not allowed to go inside my grandparents house) but I bet it tasted good.

 

My Journey of Riding Jackets

    I have sewn so many riding jackets that I am getting a bit sick of making them. I am trying to make a pattern that makes a good looking jacket. I know how to sew one but I just can't figure out how to make them more fitted. So lets start at the beginning. One of my first posts was about this jacket. It came out decent but I just didn't know how to sew on the sleeves.

    I made it my cutting apart a Breyer jacket and making a pattern from that. This is what my patterns are based on.

    Stored in one of my bins is a bag of all my jackets. I don't really know why I save them, I guess because they took so much time and effort that I just didn't want to throw them away.

    This jacket is the first one that  ever did.

    This one came out good but I made it way too small. 😕

    Now this is a funny story. I wanted to try and not have to hem it so I covered the ends with some fabric glue like the hay bags tutorial on desktop stables. Well that did not work out, The paper on the other side got stuck to the fabric and it was just a big mess.

 I guess I am still trying to make the perfect pattern. I probably will read this post when I'm older and laugh at all of my fails. (This is not even half of them) I promise once I make the best pattern I will post a tutorial, so stay tuned!