Monday 26 February 2018

My Favourite 2018 Breyers

Here are my Top 5 Favourites from this year's Breyer range:

1. Mason



I absolutely love this year's Horse of the Year. It's a beautiful sculpture in a really nice pose and the colouration looks lovely. Definitely adding this one to my show string!

2. Mystery Horse Surprise Stablemates



First of all who doesn't like surprises? Secondly what a beautiful selection of models. You wouldn't be disappointed with any of the choices from this set they are all really gorgeous.

3. Day Dreamer



Every year I add the decorator Classic to my collection and this year will be no exception. Day Dreamer is a lovely translucent colour. She is much much nicer in person than her promo pics.

4. Wild at Heart



No it isn't just because there is a G2 Appaloosa. The colour on all four of these Stablemates is really lovely, I particularly like the Reiner.

5. Suncatcher Stablemates



It was between this and the Glow in the Dark set but I think this is a really lovely and fun set. It encourages you to do something completely different to your normal customising and the pieces actually come out really nice, even with limited skill!

Saturday 24 February 2018

Model of the Day - Creon

We seem to be going through a bit of a Greek theme recently!

Our model of the day today is the rather lovely Creon

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Name: Creon
Show Name: CRS Creon
Breed: Dutch Warmblood
Colour: Grey
Gender: Stallion
Scale: Stablemate
Brand: Breyer
Model Number: 701774
Model Name: Horses of the World
Mould: G2 Warmblood
Year Produced: 2004
Face Markings: None
Leg Markings: 1x White Ermine
Sire: None
Dam: None
Unique ID Code: 632

Friday 23 February 2018

Four New Custom Schleich

I started these guys in December but I've been so behind with everything they have only just been finished!

But on the plus side they are all finished and up for sale :)

First up is Casanova, the English Thoroughbred Mare

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Painted to a lovely golden champagne

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Second is Casino Royale, the English Thoroughbred Stallion

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This one has been painted to a red dun

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Of course you couldn't have the Stallion and Mare without the foal. This is the English Thoroughbred Foal.

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I went for a lovely red bay for this one

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And finally is the new Zebra mare

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Obviously this one is stripey :p

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All have been listed for sale at: http://www.chestnutridge.co.uk/customs--resins-231-c.asp

Thursday 22 February 2018

Dionysus - 2018 NaMoPaiMo Horse

I did it! I finished him off quite late last night and I'm so happy with him :)

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He's the AA Carousel Horse, I bought him from Donna's box at a show last year.

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I added the pole myself, it's just a perspex rod with a bit of epoxy putty to give it some detail

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His base colour is palomino, done in airbrushed acrylics with pastelling and hand painted details.

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The costume has been done in three shades of hand painted purple, including a nice metallic one for the blanket

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The detailing was done in metallic gold

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He is then finished off with Swarovski crystals

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I have named him Dionysus, I wanted to go with Midas but as you guys know I already have a Midas, so I went with the next best thing :p

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I'm so happy with this one, it is so nice to paint something for yourself that you love

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Wednesday 21 February 2018

Julep and Pim

Awww look how squishy that foal is!



This pair are BreyerFest special runs for 2018

Tuesday 20 February 2018

Model of the Day - Caesar

Our model of the day today is the might, brave and strong Caesar

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Name: Caesar
Show Name: CRS Caesar
Breed: Shetland
Colour: Bay
Gender: Stallion
Brand: Magpie
Mould: Shetland
Scale: Classic
Finish: Matte
Face Markings: White Stripe
Leg Markings: None
Sire: None
Dam: None
Unique ID Code: 867
Best Live Show Placing: 6th Place

Live Show Quotes - Submissions Wanted

We've been saying we should do this for a while!

So I want the funniest thing you've overheard at a live show (or things), I'll compile them into a list and do a Blog post with all of them later on in the week :D

Comment on Facebook (where this will be shared), email me or comment underneath. Promise to keep everything anonymous but let's keep this light hearted please!

GO FORTH AND THINK OF THE HILARITY!

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Monday 19 February 2018

Supreme Champion Data Collection

I got a bit bored last year and decided I would go through all my photographs and upload all the pictures of Supreme Champions I had from the last 11 years worth of live shows onto Facebook.

Once done I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a data analysis on the situation.

First of all let me say that I do not have data from every single show, so this is in no way a thorough analysis, but it is quite interesting.

Secondly it is obviously skewed in some ways, specialist shows, a lack of shows with certain sections, one horse that consistently does very well etc etc. all mean that the analysis really isn't to be trusted at all.

But that doesn't mean it isn't interesting data and I thought I would share it with you guys.

The Raw Data

The spreadsheet itself has the following raw data for each Supreme Champion:

Show Name
Show Year
Finish
Colour
Breed
Mould (this isn't complete because I'm bad at identifying resins and it would take time for me to ID everything, so this isn't in the actual analysis)
Type (perf/in hand)
Brand
Performance Type (where applicable)

There are 147 champions recorded from shows as far back as 2008, so that's about 10 years worth.

Finish


As you can see from the above graph the most popular finish was Artist Resin a total of 68 Supreme Champions were Artist Resin (around 46%). The least popular finish was Commercial China with just 1 Supreme Champion (around 1%) being a Commercial China model.

Colour


I was surprised with colour how little variation there was to some extent. The top three colours have very little between them really. The most popular colour was grey (31), the second pinto (27) and the third bay (24). Interestingly I chose to split out different types of spotted pattern, however, even if we combined both blanket and leopard it would still only make up 17 in total.

The least popular colours that actually gave rise to supremes were rabicano, silver dapple and dun. Although it is worth noting that some colours simply don't feature. There have, for example, not been a single double dilute champion. Equally there have been no champagnes. I also found it interesting that there had been 6 buckskin champions but just one dun (although again I split out grulla and dun, if combined there would be 3).

Breed


Unsurprisingly breed saw the largest spread of winners, there is really very little in it.

With 9 horses Appaloosa was the most popular but Warmblood was shortly behind with 8. Paint and Thoroughbred both had 7 Supremes and Arabian, Mustang and Sport Horse all had 6.

It is not unsurprising that more common breeds and types would have more Surpemes because there are simply more of these horses on the show circuit. I'm not sure we can therefore take a huge amount from this. Although I do think it is interesting that the two most flashy coloured breeds (Appaloosa and Paint) are the most common champions when Grey (arguably a less flashy colour) is the most common colour to win.

Type


I would take this one with a bit of a pinch of salt. What I don't have is data as to whether these shows actually have a performance section or not. The real question is of the shows which have a performance section is an in hand or a performance entry more likely to win? I just don't have the data to answer that.

Brand


I would ignore the Artist Resin part, we already know that these are the most popular type and we also know that they don't really have brands like other models. So let's look at CM & OF models only.

It probably won't surprise you to know the most popular brand is Breyer (with 28 champions) followed by Peter Stone (with 10 champions). We then have Animal Artistry (6) and Copperfox (5).

The least popular brands that have won are Chevel, CollectA and Northlights. Interestingly despite being the brand leader in Europe Schleich do not have a single Supreme under their belt.

Performance Type


There were 28 supreme champions that are performance champions.

The most popular entries are scenes (6) followed by driving (5) and Western trail (5). There is just one champion that was a simple ridden entry (English Ridden) and one that was In Hand. This data definitely suggests that more is more! People like a lot of detail and complexity.

The Ideal Horse?

So according to this data the ideal horse would be an Artist Resin Solid Grey Appaloosa. Obviously that couldn't exist so let's take the second most popular breed and say an AR Grey Warmblood.

Although again I would take this with a pinch of salt. How much are these results skewed by a gorgeous grey TB resin that has several supremes under his belt? How do British Breed shows and other themed shows skew the results? What would have won at the shows that simply don't run Supreme Championships?

More Data?

So there are two more things that I am looking to add, the first is scale and the second is mould. I think mould will be pretty well spread with a couple of models skewing the results but I think scale would also be interesting (although again those mini scale models would help to skew this).

I hope you've enjoyed reading this and having a look at the data :) If you have any questions please feel free to email me at catriona@chestnutridge.co.uk






Saturday 17 February 2018

Creating the Live Show Scene

Every few years insanity takes over and I do a lot of crying over superglue and tiny bits of paper.

I highly recommend nobody ever does these things, it induces insanity, anger and moodiness. It makes you stressed and annoyed.

But 60 hours later you end up with something you are immensely proud of, yes it isn't perfect, yes there is still a lot I could do and add, but the amount of work and detail I have poured into this just fills me with joy.

This is why I love this hobby, creating tiny little miniature worlds that I can lose myself in :)

So here are some step by step pics and detailed pictures and descriptions on how I created it.

On the walls are displays like you would see in any village hall, each one had to be slowly put together. The cloud in this one was just paper with little bits of tissue stuck on!

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The noticeboards themselves were just printed and stuck on. Printables FTW!

The ring sign was also printed, the post it notes are cut up big post it notes. I used a really sharp pencil to write all the breeds on. For the class (which is 'Other American' in case anyone is curious) I laid one in front of each horse and then put discarded ones in the centre with other breeds on.

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Part way through the raffle table, just a selection of odd things at this point!

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The tables all had blankets, just cut up pieces of fabric which I glued down

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Every village hall has a picture of the Queen! So of course I had to add one :) Again just a printable

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The boxes were just things I found. The larger ones are boxes that held bits for my dremel (which are now in a draw....) and the smaller ones are what the little jockey and rider came in. Add some cut up bits of bubblewrap and perfect :D

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This is the box from the Jockey horse

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Most of the people are action figures. I got the Dr. Who ones off eBay, I knew they were to scale and had reasonably modern normal dress so were perfect!

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This is the whole scene put together for the first time. When I'm building these I block them out first then take them all apart and glue down!

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The horses were just cheap model railway ones from eBay. I learned from the model horse shop that the best way to do these was to put the bag next to my painting spot and everytime I have paint left in my airbrush just spray it on!

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You can see the other part of the Jockey horse box and also one of the pouches I made, just felt sewed together. I liked the idea of one person having a conga of horses because there's always one at every show!

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Here you can see the details on the table, most of these are printables. Obviously lots of detail here, all the certificates, results sheets, schedules and lists are to the same schedule and match, as do the BMECS cards of course.

The blusher brushes are the end of cocktail sticks that have been cut off and then coloured with sharpies!

The breed cards are just miniature versions of my own ones. The BMECS cards were photographed from the cards I have for my next show (which is the schedule I based it on) and then shrunk and printed, each one is unique, no duplicates. The ones on tables are signed and some have been filled in.

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The sitting dolls are just cheap dolls house ones, tea cups again cheap dolls house ones!

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My biggest expense was this jockey on horse, I love him so much! You can also see other details like a mobile phone (again printable) and raffle tickets (again printables)

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Every table is different, because we are all different at shows. This guy has shoved all his breed cards on his chair, he's also brought a Breyer to sell at lunch!

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I felt that Amy's table very much channelled the level of chaos I create at shows, certificates and breed cards everywhere, she's got no list because she forgot it, her bubblewrap is exploding all over the place, very me!

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I already had the coke bottles and crisp packets so I just added those in. I also made Amy a Starbucks cup and a MacDonalds bag!

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She has a sales horse on her chair next to her iPad! Again a printable

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And then the complete opposite, the perfectly organised person. The cups came with plates so I made some little cakes and biscuits out of milliput and painted them. She has two biscuits next to her tea, the people with the conga have a cake with a bite taken out!

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She's also got lots of pouches and her breed book of course!

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These cups were a nightmare! I will redo them at some point. Each one is filled with tiny little raffle tickets, as they would be at a real show!

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And of course some prizes, a trophy and a Breyer for the Supreme and some rather nice rosettes :D

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Laura complained that there was no Brandy, so I added a Spaniel

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The boxed Breyers are from a template you can get online and then just tied in with embroidery thread (well sewed in basically)

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All of these are printed/cut up. As you can see they are also partially filled in results sheets, a full running order/judging list, certificates, BMECS cards (each one unique) and post it notes :D

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The pens are also just cocktail stick ends, another printable here, the breed card

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Martha is judging and of course has signed her BMECS cards!

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I hope you enjoyed this :) I shall add some helpful links below so you can create some of the stuff for yourself!

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Tiny Plastic Horses

N Scale (small): http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/50pcs-1-150-UnPainted-White-Farm-Animals-Horses-N-Scale/182118726296?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

HO Scale (larger): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/50-x-HO-Scale-Model-UnPainted-White-Farm-Animals-Horses-Different-Poses-1-87/221890556036?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Breyer Box Printables: https://desktopstables.wordpress.com/category/printables/

My Pinterest Printables Board: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/catrionahorses/dolls-house/

There are lots of details you can't see here and will just have to appreciate in person! Everything from plug sockets to tiny notepads.