Pendants

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A loooong trip this weekend from Cumbria to Newmarket, Suffolk to attend an event for the benefits of the youngstock, cousins and equally obsessed youngstock friend…the UHH Hullabaloo. In ordinary mortal
Parlance (whispers) a model horse convention… but it’s good they have a hobby!

So I took a break from preparing for C-Art, Cumbria’s Open Studio event, to make a very long drive to the drier regions of the UK to the fabled racing town with its smaller and more lightweight inhabitants (all jockeys of some sort, or jockeys-in-waiting) and its split pavements (this wide tracks for the racehorses, and this narrow strip for human mothers and buggies – but don’t scare the thoroughbreds) and millions but millions of pounds of horseflesh hidden behind double gates after double gates after double gates.

The convention is held at The National Stud (did you know that the stallions serve up to five mares a day during the breeding season?) and is well organised and thronged with happy and well behaved enthusiasts, all shiny and bushy pony-tailed.

And then the heavens opened… this is, I thought, the dry eastern fenlands, Cambridgeshire into Suffolk?
Not on Saturday. Started fine so on went the frock but spitting by nine and absolutely thundering down by ten. Stair rods. Cats, dogs, rabbits elephants and buckets. Hammering down onto the roofs of the marquees, we couldn’t leave if we wanted to stay even a tiny bit dry without looking as though we had emerged from a lake within nanoseconds.
We were painting miniature models, practising the customising technique (many many thin layers, almost like dirty water they are so thin, let them dry fully in between!) and wondering if we adults needed new glasses when we realised that the buckets loads of water crashing on the roof were falling from hefty plumdark clouds and sucking out the light.

The Showing Tent had a river running through it and the laminated signs were beginning to look distinctly bathed.

Around the UK’s Standard Bank Holiday Weather, I ran a workshop on Drawing Horses and helped my sister do hers on Making A Model’s Saddle (that went down a bundle!).

We learnt how to “pastel” a horse and about the tools and materials needed for “Medallion-Making”.

I played around with the tiniest in the Breyer model horse range (the Mini Whinnies) and turned it into a little pendant. Possibly may be doing a workshop on this next year. It isn’t finished – I think a small “charm” hanging from it, more beads on the hanging thread – which in turn needs to be a thin leather thong, not this thicker fluffy one.
So Breyer Jewellery :-)?

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