A Collection of Almost Congas

 Hey y'all! So I haven't posted for a few days, and that's mainly because I'm waiting for NaMo to start so I can start posting my progress photos, plus also just generally worrying about the weather--I'm in the southern part of the United States and while my state has mercifully been spared by the huge ice storm bombarding the other Southern states, we are still having super low temps and rain, so it's been a whole lot of prepping to stay warm in my house! I really want to stay in the groove of posting here though, so I thought I would showcase a part of my collection that's pretty common: the half-conga, or almost conga. Generally, due to not having a lot of space, I tend to collect more Stablemates than any other scale, so I have quite a lot of full-fledged SM congas. Classics I have a few 3 and 4 model congas, but Traditionals, I seem to have a whole lot of half-congas. This actually isn't even all of them, I just ran out of steam going back and forth from my bedroom to the kitchen!

Cantering Welsh Ponies Tally Ho & Plain Pixie

Proud Arabian Stallions in liver chestnut & bloody shoulder grey. I believe the liver is a pretty rare, low run model, and of course the bloody shoulder is Freedom.

Indian Ponies! I included her SM version because I feel like it doesn't really count to the Traditional IP conga, but also, it is technically the same mold...isn't it funny that I have a conga of her in SM form but not Traditional?

Trads: The classic bay blanket IP, and TSC Sayen.

SMs: They have no official names, so I'll just give you their show names! Anniversary pinto is Merveilles, buckskin is Alessa, and black frame is Night Maiden.

Sadly, these are my only two Lady Phases...I desperately need more, but especially Silky Keno! Don't get me wrong, though, I adore these girls. Left to right: BF Surrey & TSC Jolene.

Like I said, these aren't all of my almost-congas...I also have: two Cleveland Bays, two Semi-Rearing Mustangs, two Foundation Stallions, two vintage Ideal QHs, two Buckshots, two Smokies, two Astrids, two Action Stock Foals...good lord! Actually, that's enough to make a part two of this post. Tune in at a later date I suppose? 

See you guys soon with some NaMo posts hopefully!

A Post About Vintage Animals

 Hey folks! With today's hint for the next BreyerFest reveal, which seems to be on one of the vintage animal molds (I'm guessing mountain goat or bighorn), I had the idea to dust off my long neglected vintage animal collection and make them the focus of today's post. Let's go!

First off we have Spanish Bull #395, and he is by far my favorite. I was fortunate enough to find him NIB in an antique store (where I got the majority of my vintage Breyers before all that was left were overpriced, beaten up models) and he is genuinely gorgeous. He's done in this fleabitten grey color with bi-eyes and he is, in my opinion, flawless.

Next is the Buffalo #381 American Bison. I believe I found him out of box at the same antique store as the bull, but he still had his hang tag (which I neglected to photograph). Unlike the bull he has a few scratches here and there, no doubt from being so old, but I love him all the same. His big head is so adorable!

This Pronghorn Antelope #389 was also found at the same store as the buffalo and the bull, NIB. Sadly he has some leg warping, but otherwise is almost flawless. I find pronghorns fascinating and there was no way I was passing up an NIB Breyer animal.

Here's one of two Classic scale animals I have, Cougar #750203. This particular cougar came with Eclipse, the black standing Mesteno. He's flawless...but his face is so goofy looking to me! I love the cougars a lot though as a big cat fan, and he came with a wolf for under $10 total at a different local antique store (I think the vendor had no idea what they were), so I wasn't passing him up!

This guy was the real highlight of the aforementioned purchase. I LOVE the Breyer wolves so much! There were a few wolf releases that look very similar to this, but I believe this one is the solo #3814 Wolf. He is sadly a little beaten up, but it was totally worth it for both his price and the chance to own a rather sought after Breyer animal mold.

And that's it for now! I really hope with the RR releases of the Longhorn bull last year and the black bears for 2026 we'll see a resurgence of these vintage animal molds, and maybe even some new animal sculptures in the next few years.

See y'all!

Off Topic: My Little Ponies

 

What's this? Not model horses? That's right, I figured it was time for my first off-topic post! In honor of Gadsden Collector Con that just happened last Saturday (which I missed due to having no ride, very sad) I wanted to post about these two G1 MLPs I found at last year's GCC, Daddy Apple Delight & Baby North Star, which then inspired me to go ahead and make an off topic blog post honoring some of my favorite G1 MLPs!

Bowtie was one of the very first G1s I bought back when I started collecting them as a 13/14 year old, and I love her dearly. She may even be my favorite G1 pony. When I was 19 I boarded a plane for the very first time to travel to Boston, which was also my first time ever traveling across the country, and my anxiety disorder was severe around that time, so I brought Bowtie with my and combed her hair on takeoff to keep myself calm. It worked!

Baby Fifi was a grail for a long time before I finally stumbled upon one for a decent price. I just love her little poodles, and I'm a sucker for a blue pony. Also...

I think she makes an EXCELLENT baby for Bowtie! (Never mind the fact that there does exist a Baby Bowtie...)

Dancing Butterflies, along with a few of the other Twice As Fancy ponies, was also a grail for me. Isn't she lovely? I love this pose, too. Unfortunately, when I curled her mane, it didn't hold! However you can see that her tail has stayed curled just fine, very strange...

And finally we have my 3 favorite unicorns, Gusty, Sparkler and Starflower. I adore this pose (I feel like it also looks very similar to Dancing Butterflies' pose) and these three are like my trinity, ESPECIALLY Starflower. It's extremely hard to find her with her symbols in good condition unless you're buying a reproduction, but I wanted the original! (Gusty is a repro and Sparkler has had her mane cut, but I think she looks kind of dashing with the shorter hair.)

Anywho, that's it for now. See you with something more substantial in a bit!

Custom Diaries: Current Victims

 Hey again! Today I wanted to make a quick post about my current customizing "victims". These are by far not all of them but they're the main ones I have ideas for right now.

Here's a G1 SM Native Dancer, all primed and naked. My vision for him is very clear and also part of a personal project: to have every model version of Man O' War and War Admiral! At the moment I have both of the Classic MOW models, and also the Traditional MOW, but I'm missing the Trad War Admiral on the MOW mold and also the new Native Dancer MOW from the Vintage club, which is also what inspired this project. This Native Dancer will become Man O' War to go with War Admiral, also on Native Dancer, which I have already completed.

Now that I've gotten over my aversion to pastels (its a long story, and the main character is Alabama humidity), I should really get started on Man O' War...

For this G1 Arabian Stallion, he will be a flaxen chestnut sabino/tobiano Part Arabian named En Vogue, and I already have him pedigreed. I do believe his 'sabino' will actually be one of the W patterns carried by Arabians, and of course the tobiano can come from a myriad of other breeds (I need to check his pedigree again...and get a link to my PA site on this blog!).

I'm pretty sure this G1 Seabiscuit will become a stock breed of some kind, but I'm torn on Paint or QH. I participated in the IPABRA ID auction, and I was really gunning for a silver grulla splash, but I ended up not winning it...I still want this guy to be silver grulla though. I wanted him to be a Paint in order to add less frame overos to my Paint breeding stock (literally all of my pedigreed Paints are frame...woops) and splash would have been cool, but I really don't wanna copy someone what is now someone else's horse, if it counts as copying. Silver grulla as a base for sure though.

(That back leg where I was holding her is still sticky from the primer that got on my glove...gonna have to troubleshoot that.)

Finally on the roster for today is this SM Indian Pony. I initially was making her a portrait of the Traditional IP Cheyenne, but I lost interest pretty quickly (and she got buried under the mounds of crap that got piled onto my desk...) and she returned to being a body. So I went looking through my painting references on Pinterest and again stumbled upon a Utah mustang who's color I've been wanting to paint for a long while. I believe his name is Clorax.

There's just something about a pinto roan mustang that gets me every time...and I LOVE the IP mold as a mustang. I actually want to make my own little customized SM mustang band, especially with the new super cheap RR on the Stablemate Semi-Rearing Mustang that just came out! I'll have this IP, another IP I customized a few years back in seal bay roan with tons of corn marks, a mini Fireheart and then the mini SRM. I think it'll be a lot of fun!

Anyways, I think that's all for now on this topic. Yesterday I actually primed 10 horses (including my new Hartland donkey & one of the Hartland nursing foals) but I'm still brainstorming on most of them.

(Yeah, I brought both nursing foals out while spraying, and then realized, wait, why did I bring both when I only want to fully repaint one?)

Oh! NaMoPaiMo registration opens in 3 days! Who's excited? Who's ready to get painting? I think I'm actually gonna re-take my registration selfie holding Huso, since I've gotten a nice haircut and am not sick as a dog like I was in the other picture (not that you could tell, but still, bleh). I'll also have a pretty interesting post coming up soon featuring my past NaMo horses, including one that has actually been repainted since then, and is now slated to be repainted a third time...he's actually featured in the above picture, IYKYK.

Anywho, see y'all in a bit, because I'm actually having a lot of fun writing for this blog and I'm not afraid to post here twice a day!

Pony Delivery: Hartland Donkey & Two Tag Alongs

 Howdy! Welcome to my first Pony Delivery post, which is pretty much what it says on the tin: when I get pony mail, I make a post about it.

Here is today's delivery, and the last one I'm allowed to make for a while. It's a Hartland donkey along with two Hartland nursing foals. Really, all I was looking for was the donkey...I came across it in some other, more expensive eBay listings and quickly fell in love, but I wasn't willing to pay upwards to $40 for it, especially because I wanted to customize it. So I did what I always do and hunted for deals and found this listing, only around $12 ($20 with shipping) because the donkey has some melting on its side (yikes!). How that happened I'm afraid to ask.

Here is the man/woman of the hour, the donkey! This thing is literally so adorable and I cannot wait to paint it. As you can see, the melting is fairly significant on the neck, but thankfully its only on the one side.

Now, a note: I worked on sanding this dude a while before making this post and I actually found that the melted areas are a little gummy, so they were easy to wear down/peel off with an X-Acto knife. That being said, before any other customizers come for me: YES, I know I should have put some epoxy sculpt over these areas. I miiiiight still do it. But I'm also pretty poor at sculpting anything besides simple ears, so I shied away from it before priming this donkey with some still pretty obvious gashes in the neck. This may cause some of you to recoil in horror but I do very, very minimal prep on my models before customizing, and the main reason for that is that I don't do commissions or anything, I simply paint these for myself, and so I don't really mind seams or small bits of plastic sticking out and whatnot. However, fret not, because this donkey is not out of the woods yet--those gashes are pretty ugly!

I'll also be making a post about my customizing victims soon so you guys can see my concepts for each body I have, including this guy!

Moving on...

Here's the first of the nursing foals, and as you can see, this guy has melting too, which was not disclosed in the listing! Pretty disheartening but I managed to file/cut away a good bit of this. As with the donkey though...this little dude is not out of the woods yet, cause oof. He's adorable though, isn't he?

And here's the second nursing foal. No melting or glaring damage, just some dirt, which is awesome! These two will also be customized along with the donkey. Actually, they're almost perfectly in scale with my Hartland QH family...twins perhaps? That would be really cool for my PA stable!

And here's everything all together. It's definitely gonna be some work getting them to look presentable enough for customizing, but I'm feeling very inspired to get it done with NaMoPaiMo coming up.

To end this post, I'll leave you guys with a question/request: what color should I paint the nursing foals? I definitely think I want to do the twins idea, and my QH family is also not painted yet...so drop some color ideas in the comments!

See you later!

Models I Got for Christmas

 Hey again! Time for my first "real" post on this blog. I wanted to start off simple, so here's the horses I got for Christmas.

Sadly, my mom declined to get me any models for Christmas, just on account of me running low on shelf space...but that didn't stop me from buying some for myself (or my friends from being generous)! Let's start from the top and go in order, because the last horse I received has the best story.

First up is the WIA release of Birdie & Boone in buckskin roan and palomino. These were the first models I purchased for the holiday season and were my early present. These guys are LITERALLY stunning. Jake Heaps is an amazing sculptor and I was SO HAPPY when I found out these two were coming out in plastic! I remember seeing them back when they were first released as resins and going crazy because I generally can't afford resins (unless they're micros/charms/second quality) and I wanted them so badly. I absolutely love mustangs, and the more rough and tumble they look, the better! Birdie is literally my ideal mustang, and Boone is so small and delicate I'm so afraid I'll break him every time I pick him up, but he's adorable. Another thing you'll learn about me as time goes on is that I'm a roan freak, and Birdie's color on this release is absolutely stunning--not to mention, she's a dilute roan! It's just a feast for the eyes. There's also a pinto Birdie/buckskin Boone from WIA on these sculpts, but I'm not as crazy about them as I am these...so perhaps I'll save up and get them to customize!

Secondly we have a Breyer Classic Mustang Mare in old style chestnut pinto. I'll admit, I'm not the best with money...but when I saw this girl for sale on Facebook for a steal, I decided to jump, and call her part of my Christmas presents. She's definitely been well loved and is not in the best condition, but I've wanted a Love mustang mare for quite a while, and she seems harder to come by in the colors that appeal to me the most. I just think she's so cute! I decided to name her Blossom.

Third up is Arapaho on the Phar Lap mold. This one was a doozy...Arapaho has been a grail of mine for literal years, but I've never been in the position to spend upwards to $40-$60 dollars on him. So when he came up in a Facebook sales post for about $15, I knew I had to get him. The catch? His tail was broken. Recently I had fixed a broken leg on a G1 Stablemate using the acetone method so I thought, no problem, I've got this. And then when I received him, acetone proceeded not to work! It ended up being okay though, because it gave me a chance to try out the baking soda + superglue method, which worked like a charm, and from his left side, you can hardly see the break. His right side was less lucky, because there's a pretty big chunk of plastic missing from the base of his tail...good thing I'm not picky at all. Despite his break and being rubbed and scuffed, I had my grail, and I love him! Except there were two variations of Arapaho released: a very speckled one and a not so speckled one. You can see that this is the not so speckled one, and my actual grail is the very speckled one. I'm thinking he needs a brother...one day.

And last but not least, I received A Class Act, a 1998 Fall Show Special on the Five Gaiter mold, as my final Christmas horse. The story here is simple but sweet...my friend Bree and I had gone to the mall theater to see Avatar: Fire and Ash and afterwards I wanted to go into this store that's directly outside the theater, inside of the mall, because I had seen Breyers in there--in particular, this Five Gaiter. Like I said, I'm bad with money (working on that for New Years!), and I after haggling the price a little bit I decided to splurge on him for $33. But when I went to pay, my card declined...and it turns out I had only $32 in my PayPal account. While I was standing there, dejected, Bree suddenly stepped up and bought the Five Gaiter for me and said, Merry Christmas! I honestly don't know what I've done in my life to have such awesome, kind, generous friends, but I love these people a ton and they clearly love me. For obvious reasons this Five Gaiter is my favorite to date and in my conga. As you can probably tell, I love vintage molds a lot, and the Five Gaiter is slowly making his way to the top of my list.

And that's it for my Christmas horses! I think soon I'll make a post about the BreyerFest reveals so far and my opinions, as well as some art updates, and of course NaMo registration is coming up so I'll be posting about that too and revealing my selfie with Huso. I'm also still getting used to this platform and planning out some series I'd like to start, like conga highlights and whatnot. Anyways, see you later!