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.

Tiny Treats

 So at this point in my life I have two 3d printers... but I don't have a color printer. Our printer is black and white, so that we wouldn't have to waste money on color ink... because we'd never need to use that right? 

WRONG! All the cool printables that are now available: just download, print, and assemble... But we have no room for another printer.

Luckily I found a cute shop on etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/EvergreenTackStudios) that has traditional scale treat bags! They are super cute and just the right size. They even come with some biscuits! 

Pumpkin Pie seams to like them! 

(I really liked the suggestion of pumpkin, and I love pumpkin pie so I think it fits. It's not even the first food name pony I've had, my sister and I used to show our hackney pony Star as Starburst. Long story short he came from an auction with the name Darrell. We changed it.)

 

Tiny Hoof Picks!

 I get custom requests every once and a while. I enjoy the challenge of designing new things and it has been a great inspiration. These are by request
but they came out soooo good, I'm adding them to the shop as well!

Sooo tiny but I managed to add a horse head.

And they fit snuggly in breyer doll hands!

Howdy from Snowy Texas

Welp, we're officially snowed in. And it's cold at 9° F. Roads aren't plowed and we are going no where. 

Luckily I got the majority of my orders out on Saturday before this mess got here. Unfortunately my printer sits in the coldest corner of the house and it's so cold its been throwing temperature fault alarms which means no printing. Woke up this morning to a push notification that we can expect rolling blackouts so it's probably a good thing I'm not printing things. 

So I've been making leadropes. 

I'm trying to go through my stash of variegated embroidery floss. 

New Herd Member

 I haven't named him yet. The breyer name is Patricks Vindicator and I usually stay with the breyer name because I'm not very creative but I'm just not feeling Patrick. Maybe Vinny? 

My plan is to make a tiny saddle and try my hand at doll customizing to make a child doll to ride him. I think the cuteness will be overwhelming. 

He came with one of these little books, instant nostalgia.  

2021

 Happy New Year!

2020 was a long and difficult year. I have no illusions about 2021 suddenly becoming sunshine and roses, we will still face COVID and lockdowns for much of it. But a lot of good things did come out of 2020 so I want to focus on those:

• I wrote 41 blog posts for 2020 which is definitely a record!
• We adopted Soup!
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• I got my new printer, Nora which is a prusa mini and can do smaller and more detailed things.
• I got engaged to the love of my life even though covid messed up any plans for a wedding in the near future.

Last year I setup a list of goals

• Blog more often! (What every blogger ever says). Ideally I want to keep to a 2 blog posts per month/ every other week schedule.    
• 41 posts is more than 2 per month!

• Make 5 new designs. That works out to roughly 1 every 2 months with some room to spare. Between my day job and my shop, design time is low.
• Well by my count I managed 16 new designs! Knocked that one out of the park!
• Redo all photos because I need to up my game!
• I did actually manage to do this which is kinda surprising to me.
• Keep a better inventory of popular items. I got slammed over thanksgiving with 20 orders, I definitely did not have enough stock to keep up with that...
• I did try. But unfortunately I ran out of stock of some things. This years thanksgiving sale involved 38 orders...  Luckily they all got out on time. Still going to have to work on this one. 
• Make a saddle. I want to improve that skill too. So I need some practice.
• Mainly due to the IMTM this did get accomplished! And I improved a lot of skills like having adjustable stirrups and working on tooling. 
  
  
  

So what are my goals for this year?

I'm going to focus on rekindling my love of the hobby. I've already started by buying some nice tack for my herd. Hopefully I'll be able to get a couple of setups done so I can enter some photo shows. 

I am currently working on updating my jump stands so that they can be easily transitioned from traditional scale to classic and schleich scales. The current jump stands are also two pieces that get glued together so I'm working to make each stand 1 piece to make them sturdier and to save myself some time.

I have some ideas for new products so I'll be working on those.

SHOP NEWS:

I may be delaying the reopening a bit. I was supposed to reopen mid-January but I'm going to be starting a new job on the 11th so it will probably wait until the end of January or the beginning of February. Sorry for the inconvenience and it will be worth the wait!

Buckets in the Wild

 

Anthony's Airpods Drying out in some silica beads, 2020

Horse supplements with Tiny buckets to Catch the Drips, 2020