#breyer

Invoking my childhood love of My Little Ponies and Fashion Star Fillies (and my later goth sensibilities) with this one! Vespera is Breyer’s Little Bits/Paddock Pals Arabian made over into a “black rainbow” unicorn. Her black coat has subtle overlays of some of the colors found in her mane and tail (made from hand-dyed wool roving.) Pretty pleased with the result! She’s available at https://www.etsy.com/listing/1232129917/vespera-custom-rrh-black-rainbow-unicorn

Super excited to get to customize a Hartland Regal Arabian! This one is a dark steel gray just starting to dapple, and the pictures don’t do justice to the little details. I named him Janus because when I first got him he had a nasty seam split in his face, which of course I’ve repaired. He’s available at https://www.etsy.com/listing/1216247584/janus-hartland-custom-dark-steeldapple

This is one of those customs I’ve been daydreaming about creating for months, and she’s finally come to fruition! Calendula is Breyer’s Stablemate Seabiscuit made over into a black pinto paint horse mare. She’s got a mohair mane and tail, and for all her small size she’s really quite striking. She is available at https://www.etsy.com/listing/1221731074/calendula-custom-black-pinto-breyer

I have added 3 new horror sculptures to my etsy store and these two are FINALLY getting primed and ready for paint. They will be listed in the next month or two once they are painted, haired, and photographed. 

I wanted to post an update for you all, in addition to the 3 horror sculptures and these two, another huge project of mine is nearing completion. I will announce that soon! 

Another random announcement is that I will be attending breyerfest this year. Not as a vendor or artisian, just as a model horse dork, but I’m still very excited to see other equine sculptors and spend a ton of money :D

hope everyone here is doing well!

Found these beautiful holiday Breyer horses for only a couple dollars each at Goodwill!

It’s Toy Time Tuesday!
With…Breyer Stablemates Unicorn Foal Surprise Celestial Family!
With the (apparent) success of their first 3 ‘surprise’ families packs, they release another set of 3 different families. There is the Enchanted, the Windswept, and this, the Celestial Family. As you can see they come in the ‘gimmick type’ box where you do see the parents but the child is hidden in a ‘castle tower’ blind box within the box. 
Each unicorn here is quite pretty but they seem to (on all of these) actually miss the entire point of ‘family’ sets because the child should look like it is related to the parents. That’s the whole point of cute family toys is “how did the parents creatively mix to get the child animal”*. I guess this lot adopted. The mother is a lovely gold and very pearly palomino, and the father is a middle gold-blue with gold hair. The child though, is a super dark purple-blue (Like wind dancer Kona) with bright gold for the hooves and horn.  The laying down baby pose is cute, with one leg reached forward and the others folded. It’s a content looking pose with good sculpting.
Fantasy palomino works really well here! Transforming the blonde body to gold and the white hair to pearl is a lovely combination. The stallion has something ‘vintage’ or an antique-type look to his color. Mom in this case seems a wild adventurer while Dad is a steadfast planner…but they love their adopted purple child & look forward to adventures with him/her. (They don’t tell you if it is a filly or a colt)
These are good sets to collect if you can find them at a reasonable price. This was 9.99 at Amazon in spring 2022, so I grabbed it but often they are more expensive than to be really worth it for small stablemates size horses and a gimmick type box you must de-box/rid of anyway.
*Yes sometimes a child animal turns out very different from the parents, or a baby horse sheds off a different-looking coat as it ages (Ex. Lipizzaner starts out brownish but turns white later in life on purpose, same with Ibis birds) HOWEVER that’s not the point of cute matching family animal toys even though it happens IRL. 

It’s Toy Time Tuesday!
With…Breyer Unicorn Swirl Gift Set!
This is a new set that came out with apparently no real fanfare in winter of 2022. It’s pretty cool to see, because it lets their popular stablemates size unicorns get even wilder with fantasy color.  The box back says they’re inspired by tie-dye, and that each set is unique. Because they’re created by making airbrush splotches for the colors, they likely are unique to a degree. (Just like how their florentine ones are) You get Dreamscicle orange walking, Razzmatazz rearing pose, Lime Sublime standing & Purple Dream with the short tail.
Opinion Time:
Is the set perfect? Not really, but it’s very good. It’s mostly just little nitpicks and is still very good to own. While 3 of them are named after food, the 4th isn’t so it feels unfitting or unmatching. Then, they didn’t paint the horns at all, which is a little odd because every other unicorn they’ve done paints the horn a different color than the body to make it seem magical. The green they chose doesn’t really go with the blue somehow? Razzmatazz is the strongest one by far with orange, yellow and magenta together and a very exciting sculpt. (They have access to all their own sculpts all the time, so why pick the unpopular short tail pose?) Lime Sublime also seems to have ‘just blotches’ and does not come across as ‘swirling’ or tie dye at all. 
The variety is good here, the paint actual-application is nice, and their price is ok at about 20 for the whole set. It should be able to be found on Amazon, and is always a set so don’t get duped by ebay single-listing these. They haven’t done anything like these before and they’re good colorful fun.