Back to vacation mode/ All orders will go out on time

Welp life threw a curve ball during breyerfest. Landlord is selling the place we rent and we've got to move. So now we're scrambling to find a house in austin, tx... one of the craziest markets in the country. I will get all my current orders out within processing time but I have to re-close so we can focus on find a place to live. I'll update the blog when it reopens...

The Witte Museum

 Over the 4th we decided to take a short trip down to San Antonio which is one of my favorite places to visit. We go a few times a year to enjoy the river walk. This time the weather was poor so we explored somewhere new! The Witte museum is part natural history, part native history, and part cowboy/ cowgirl history. We went through exabits on various dinosaur bones and fossil found in Texas (T-rexes were one of them in case you happen to be thinking of time traveling... lol). There were also maps of Texas throughout the prehistoric periods showing that it spent a lot of time under water and as part of a massive coastline which explains why they find so many fossils. 

But of course the best part of the museum involved horses!

I loved this museum display, the attention to detail was superb. I'm sure this would be a pretty strong setup on the live show table too!

Then we moved on to old west tack. Sorry for the glare from the glass. 

I really liked the use of color on this particular saddle.

And here we have a nice sidesaddle!

I also go some photos of the wagon of course!

As well as the information placard.

I really enjoyed the museum, if you are near San Antonio definitely go, we spent over 4 hrs there! Also if anyone want to use these as reference pics, I don't mind. 

Vacation Mode and Breyerfest

 All,

The shop will be on vacation as of today. We will reopen on  July 14th and kick things off with our Breyerfest sale (25% storewide) + free gift in all orders!

I've been contemplating whether or not to take a brief hiatus prior to breyerfest. Last year I did a big sale and it was amazing so this year I want to knock it out of the park. That means I need a bit of time to prioritize making a bunch of stuff. I'll be updating this blog and my instagram (handcraftedbykari_studios) with pics of all the new stuff. Hopefully there will be a lot.

I'm putting together sets like I used to have for a while, so far I have a bunch of haybags and I'm working hard to get the buckets finished up and halters + leads made!

I've also redone my tackmaking storage. Since I don't make a lot of tack I only get small sheets of leather from rio rondo on occasion so I switched from this super messy drawer thing.

To this much more organized toolbox. Plus it is easier to store and bring with me (in case I want to make tack in front of the TV or something). Can you believe it was only $11 on amazon! (SCORE!)

Rainbows

 I got some rainbow filament! I've been wanting some for a while and I finally convinced myself to get some... (I'm really good at convincing myself to get things lol!) One of the issues is that it takes a lot of filament to get a good expression of the color change... so it's going to take some experimentation. I printed out a jump stand to get an idea of how fast it changes and wow did it turn out better than expected. 

I was worried the shift would be too abrupt between the colors so it's nice that it's a long gradient of shift. One of the ways to get a even better shift is to do a bigger print. So instead of 2 jump stands, next time I might try 4 to get it more pronounced, the only downside being that it will take 22hrs to complete such a big print...

I'm trying to see if I'd be able to do buckets or feed pans but I've got to load the build plate up a lot to do so which is always a risk, if one piece comes unstuck it all has to go. 

In other news, I've been in a jump making mood recently. I finally go around to making a schleich scale version of my most popular jump. A classic scale version is in the works as well.

Why did they have to make the heads bigger?

 I guess all my dolls are old and now all of the new breyer dolls have the biggest heads.

 I made this really cool helmet for my dolls.

 But here we are, I don't make helmets to fit the new heads. I don't own dolls of the new heads. And now I have a really cool infographic since saying it won't fit the new dolls is not clear enough. But seriously why did they have to do a weird hybrid thing?

Tiny Furniture

I don't know why it took me so long to realize... my barn needed an office. (I still haven't actually built my dream barn yet, but at least I'll have all the props when I do!)

So I designed a desk and a chair!

It fits my breyer doll really well!

If you're on the hunt for some 1:9 scale furniture,  check out my etsy!

18 Ways Not to Make a Saddle Rack

Every once and a while you'll come across a quote about Thomas Edison saying something along the lines of "I have not failed 1,000 times, I have learned 1,000 ways not to make a lightbulb."

If that is the case then this massive pile of prototypes is just successfully not making a saddle rack?

I made a lot of prototypes. I've never really designed anything that has moving parts before and it was super difficult to wrap my mind around how each piece should look to get the finished product. I'll ask a simple question, can you picture a beach? Can you conjure the image of a yellow star and rotate it? If you can that's super cool and I envy you immensely. I cannot, I have aphantasia which means that while I know what the concept of a thing is, the ocean is blue, the sky is blue, there are palm trees... I see nothing, just blackness when I close my eyes. 

Maybe that's why there are soooo many uglies? 

But it was worth it!

I'm making a bunch to donate. Due to how fragile they are I will be selling the via commission only to make sure they don't get used as a play item. I'm selling them for $15, just go to my etsy shop, https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandcraftedByKari and click the Contact button and ask for a wire saddle rack, state how many and the color you want and I will get back to you.