My goal for April (and possibly May) is/was to only work on projects that are already started and that I have all the materials to finish. This is linked to a Spring Cleaning of my art supply hoard in which I am attempting to organize (a box for everything and everything in its box!) and declutter my workspace.

I’m making decent progress so far– the giant pile of green boxes are actually finished bases awaiting photos and listing to Etsy. I’ve also got a bunch of new fences (using up the craft wood) and am painting up a bunch of the Fat Pony bodies for donation and sale.

I’m also in the midst of working through a free class on product photography (thanks to Amy Eaton) and am trying to put that information to good use… which means there aren’t any fun photos for the post today, but they are on the way. (Plus a few more photography tutorials!)

How-To Season is Upon Us!

Now that the weather is finally starting to get nice again, it means that I can get back into casting! 🙂

The biggest draw to the blog is still the molding and casting tutorials and those need some serious updating (2014, yikes!). So expect a few more tutorials to pop-up on 100% silicone caulk mold making, OOMOO mold making, plaster casting, and resin casting… and maybe aluminium. I have lots to learn still and I’m going to do my best to document the process so other folks can learn as I go.

My dream goal is to find a way to do pewter casting and get the process efficient enough (and cheap enough) that I can offer services to hobby folks. I love love love Maggie’s old pewter horses and I know she had to stop offering them because of costs and lead time. Who knows, maybe it isn’t possible, but I figure it will be fun to try!  (And I could make pewter Fat Pony magnets and how cute would that be! ;))

…this totally doesn’t count towards my ‘no new art supplies’ rule. *innocent whistling*

Piles and Piles of Props!

I’m trying to stock the Etsy store with a variety of premade props (bases, fences, cavaletti, etc.) so that folks don’t have to wait on a custom order. But in order to sell generic inventory (where I don’t need new photos), I need consistent looking products! That means working on refining my process a bit, so it takes less time to make things and the results are as uniform as I can get them.

I’m hoping that once folks realise the awesome that is the interchangeable bases/fences that they will be interested… but that’s going to take a bit of work to get the idea out into the world.

Which is why I’m donating things to live shows! 🙂

Right now the donation package is one base and fence and then three Fat Pony magnets. I figure those will work well for little door prizes or whatnot and it’ a good way to raise awareness with people in the hobby. (I’m also back to advertising on MH$P, so here’s hoping I have better luck than last time!)

Know of a live show that could use some donations? Then just let me know in the comments! Right now I’m keeping an eye on the Region 9 shows (since those are my home region) and trying to work up stock to the point where I could run a vendor’s table. I’m thinking of it basically like a really tiny craft show. 😉

Wait, What About the Horses?

I’ve been doing a lot of magnets and model horse props recently… and not a lot of model horses (other than my NaMoPaiMo micro). There are a couple of reasons, but a lot of it boils down to ‘model horse are hard.’ There’s a lot of pressure to make sure that they come out perfect and I’m just not that awesome a painter yet, so it ties me up in knots.

Which is why I stopped taking custom orders and why I’m having so many issues getting back to working on the palomino body box trade horse. *sighs*

So I’ve taken out and prepped a bunch of stablemates and I’m going to get back into the habit of painting one horse a week. This will hopefully get my comfort level back to where it needs to be in order to finish the body box trades. I’ll be doing some posts on prepping and paintwork, and maybe a video if I can figure out how to manage it.

Now back to work! 😀