Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Progress Report On Prepping

The new primer seems to be great, if not fast-drying.  I took my three bodies I'm doing at home to Shana's and she said I need to sand more and paint again, but that where I'm at is great, just not done.  She thought my feet were really detailed and well done.

My big revelation was that I need finer sand paper.  I used hers and it worked way better the finest of what I bought to try.  So, now I know what I need!  I also need more pastels.  What I have will work, but I have half as many as she has and it makes it easier to have more and not have to mix.

I will get pictures up soon...I promise...maybe.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

My New Adventure: Breyer Horses

   Since I sold both my horses (wow that was fast), but I am not ready to not be a "horse person" (that's just not going to happen), I decided to make an attempt at Model Horses.  Now, I was never a kid who collected Breyers.  Somewhere (still searching for them) I have three Breyers from my youth.  I found out last summer that you can SHOW model horses.  Somehow I had missed that memo.
   I met a lady who shows Breyers and have been learning more about showing them and re-painting them.  She is hosting a show in August and I bought a model in the out of the box classes and I'm working on a few customs to show in the custom classes.  I will document my progress here!

    So far, I have a model I'm working on at Shana's house, the lady helping me learn everything, and three more I'm working on at home.  All of them are Stablemates.

    I collected the tools Shana recommended.  I picked a couple bodies from my box of NOT LSQ Stablemates and then I used an exact-o-knife to scrape off seams, carve out ears, and carve frogs into their teeny-tiny feet.  That nearly gave me carpel tunnel, but the precision and repetitiveness appealed to my perfectionism.

   Next, I sanded the bodies till I couldn't feel seams or knife marks.  Yesterday, I got ready to paint them with the primer.  Disaster!  I used the same paint that I used at Shana's, but the stuff came out in too big of drops instead of a mist, got everywhere, dripped from the can, and dried in tiny bubbles on the horses!  I was soo frustrated!  Only one came out well enough to not start over.  Talk about discouraging!  Norman went to the store to try a different primer and returned with a different brand.

    Today, I sanded the bubbles off the bodies and realized I hadn't gotten frogs carved on one, so I did that. Finally, I was ready to re-primer them.  The new primer covered much better and other than a grass bug landing on the rump of the 2nd one and causing a minor tragedy it seemed to work better.  The downside is that it claims to take 24 hrs to fully dry completely.  But, I got the two bodies re-painted and they're drying.  I think the primer will actually dry much faster on the horses because they're small and the paint doesn't need to be very thick.

   When I get the energy, pictures of the "before" bodies will be up!