Today I went shopping. While floating through I came across the leather area. I stopped and looking through what they had since I need to make 2 showmanship halters. I happened to find a swatch of brown leather that was in a small enough grain that it might work for micro. So I grabbed it. By thought has always been I would work on tack and if it worked then maybe I would show micro performance. I then ended up looking through the fabric area at the pleather bolts. I found a beautiful, thin piece of black that had almost no grain. I bought some of that and put the brown swatch back. While driving home I was thinking this was going to be a good idea, wrong. I spent and hour just getting the western saddle pattern to the correct size and trying to find a good english saddle pattern took me another hour. I found a nice partial pattern, but I don't know what is missing from it. I gave up on finding a pattern and decided to wing it. I have ridden english my entire life, I know what a good saddle looks like. I have made a couple stablemate scale ones before using a broken Breyer dressage saddle for leather. They did a decent job until I was able to get nice, real tack. I will hopefully take some progress pics as I go, but I'm rather bad at doing that. I have never made anything big for live showing. I have made a few small things that I have used and done well with, but ever a full set.
To ran on my already washed out parade, I didn't get the Megaboom. And there is a BEAUTIFUL one for sale on MHSP right now, starting at $200. Insert sad face. The most I will usually spent on a micro is $125, shipping included. I can't spend that much on a micro knowing that I have other things that need to be paid for (I feel so adult, it hurts). I will just have to be patient and hope that another one will come along. I have been really lucky the last few months with how many horses I have come across. I keep trying to remind myself that it takes time to make a string, but I'm not good with waiting.
On a plus, I found some more totes for the Micros. I bought one from Walmart yesterday and it turns out that they have changed the sizes of the one I have very slightly. Instead of the wells being 2 inches wide they are now 1 7/8s. In micro scale that's a huge difference. So that one became my performance tote and I found 3 more at Fleet Farm. I only needed 1 but I can always find uses for the other 2 until I need them for Micros. So the plan is back on, the second tote will house the bigger horses, since there are enough of them as well as any unpainted ones I have at the time. I'm still waiting to hear if I got the Bambi/thumper that are on MHSP right now. They are up as offers and I put one in, but she was going to leave it open until today. I really hope I get them, I have been stalking their ad since it was posted and I have fallen rather in love with them. I just love the color and markings of them both. They have custom bases with greenery on them, I'm not sure about that part but I will just have to see what it looks like if I get them.
In the mean time, I'm going to try the micro english set first, then the western. I might take a break in between them to make the showmanship halters. I will post pics of things as they are finished or sooner if I remember.
Hoping for thoughts of support as I leap into tack making.
Good Luck!