Christmas Ponies

So for this years Christmas, being the poor college student that I am, I made my parents a pair of ponies! The one for my father was a ski pony, and the one for my mom was based on flower paintings by Monet.



My mom's pony was made with a basic cleaned up trash pony. It's painted with about 95% acrylic paint (just a small amount of water added to my pure acrylic), has Golden Sun and Sour Grapes colored nylon hair, and (obviously) has very crimped hair. The paint is coated with matte Mod Podge.

Oh, and the eyes aren't completely re-painted. I left the basic outline on them, but added the eyeshadow and re-painted the irises. Nothing too complex.



The pony also has a copper collar and a copper tail piece. The copper collar would have been much better if it were thicker.

I originally wanted to give the pony curled hair, but I can't figure out how to curl at all! I've read boil perm tutorials, but I don't have proper soft curlers, so that's probably why nothing turned out right. Instead, I got the hair soaked, and braided it. After it was dry, I took the braid out and brushed out the hair. To prevent afro-pony, I had to tie both the top and bottom with ribbons. It was SERIOUSLY afro-ed out.

There are five beads in some of the hair that's not tied back, as is sort of shown in the first picture. I didn't think to photograph them well...probably because they're really not my favorite part of the pony. I loved the beads and they matched fairly well, but they don't mesh well with the rest of the pony.



Ok, I know, I know...I'm really not a painter at all. Or a sculptor. I just like pretending I am from time to time :P Anyway, when I painted this pony, I started with the lightest green first, and waited for it to dry before I did each successive layer. Really, though, it's acrylic paint, and I could have done it the other way around, too. It's just easier to make it look good when I do it lightest to darkest. The flower heads are sorta-kinda zinnias, though I didn't detail them TOO much. The colors are right, though!

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That's all for now! I'm going to put my dad's pony up later today, since it has a LOT more work done on it...well, not more work as in more time, but it's a lot more complex. ^^

Please Stand By...

Programming will continue as scheduled shortly...

Holidays are winding down finally...I'm at my parents' house still, so no new ponies, and no pony supplies. I'll be posting the gift ponies and Audrey's wedding pony that um...I've been negligent in sending her. But it's been made! Months ago! Anyway. Pics after I see my brother off to London tomorrow. Probably.

Update: Scratch that. Trying to figure out logistics regarding getting a cat. Will post soon-ish.

As a side note, does anyone know a good way to keep working on ponies with a cat in the house? I've a habit of leaving xacto knives, chemicals, and pony hair out on the coffee table when I'm not finished with a pony. The plastic drawers that I've been using for my supplies don't seem sturdy enough to keep a cat out...

Side notes :)

Thanks so much for the awesome cute background, Ellie :D

I also have to commend Aikarin.com for her amazing tutorials. They're some of the best out there and helped me immensely. I'm jealous of her great skills! But hey, maybe in as many years as she's been doing ponies, I'll be able to do that too ;)

I have several ponies that I want to post on here, but they're gifts for the holidays (er, and one that I spaced about sending to my cousin for her wedding two months ago...) so there probably wont be any major posts until after Christmas. But hey, then I have all winter break, and money enough to buy some Apoxie Sculpt and try that out!

Speaking of which, the studio that makes Apoxie Sculpt is just seven miles away from where I live. I was looking at shipping costs and how to order it and noticed that they're just down the highway from my apartment! How cool is that?

Old Ponies

These are some of my past ponies, from when I started out. I might go into detail on a couple in the future, but for now this is just reference for where I started from...





This was my first pony. It was done before I got any proper brushes or started re-hairing, but I still think it turned out better than some of my other early ponies.




This is Axel from Kingdom Hearts. I intended to go back and make his eyes look better when I got some proper brushes but I never did...




This is the first pony I rehaired. The plugs were too thick, so the hair stands up like some bad 80's hairdo. She's also the first time I tried dry-brush gradient painting, and it sort of sucks on her.




Ireland Pony. Basically just practice on gradient dying of hair and dry-brush technique. Getting better at it!




Corset pony...great name, right? Anyway, she didn't turn out amazing since I used Sculpey polymer clay, but I may try making another one when I get some Apoxie Sculpt. I like her piercings.





Ok, Supernova was definitely my favorite pony before I ruined her...I tried to preserve the paint on her by putting a finish on her, but somehow these weird speckles turned up everywhere. The pics are obviously before that happened!




Halloween Girls. Yeah. Not a lot to say about them. Done on baby ponies.

New blog, eh?

Well, I guess I should get this blog started. I'm a modder of My Little Ponies, and thought I might document my progress and some of my creations on here, rather than Facebook.

I've been modding for approximately six months now, and though I'm not normally the artistic type, I'm loving it. In my real life, I'm a student of Dairy Science and Biology, and absolutely love all kinds of science, though it can be a bit much sometimes. My ponies are my diversion when I'm overwhelmed by science and school.

I'm not active in any MLP forums, though I do peruse them regularly. At the moment I've only sold ponies to people I know from school, but I'll probably branch out to an Etsy store eventually. Right now I'll do a commission if the opportunity comes up, but I'm not actively out there trying to get work.

Now, I'm far from perfect, or even a professional level. But that's a lot of why I started this blog! I want to document what techniques work for me, what techniques are terrible, and the improvement in my ponies. If I can help anyone out along the way, all the better!

I have a Pony Preparation tutorial coming up soon. There are some good guides out there, but sometimes the wording can get confusing, so I came up with a photo tutorial on what to do. I also have a semi-tutorial on how to prepare one of those impossible figure-skating/ballet ponies, though I've yet to figure out how to get the last skate off...