More Progress on Maroon costume!

Just sewed all the tassles onto the back, vertical sides and bottom panel sides of one side of the costume. Still got the bottom panel tassles to string and sew on the otherside yet, and on the collar as well. Hopefully I'll be doing that today! I've got my reins, leadrope, throatlash, bridle etc...all braided and ready to be tied off. Once I get all the tassles sewn onto my saddle I will be adding maroon trim around the edges. I hope to finish this one up this week!

I've got 5 silver crystal chain halters in the works that will also hopefully be ready this week as well. I'll be posting photos of items as I finish them up, so stay tuned to see more!

Presentation sets & costume progress...

Been hard at work on another costume! Got a couple more in the works right behind this one. Several distractions over the past few weeks have put me further behind in my work than I want to be again, but that's life there isn't much I can do about things that happen unplanned! I guess I'm trying to work on not letting it get me down so much, seems there's always something stupid going on that manages to mess up my plans! I find it frustrating!:0)
This costume has a maroon base, and it will be a tripple tiered costume when it's finished, also one of the reaons that it's taking me a bit longer to complete!

386 tassles on this one total. The tassle are maroon, pink and ivory. It takes me approximately 5 minutes to assemble one string of 3 right now, but I'm getting a little faster at it. I have 97 strings to put together total. Using size #15 beading needles for the first time has helped me increase my speed and accuracy, however the needles seem to break a lot faster. I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally have needles on hand that are small enough for the beads that I use! I've found that these needles are impossible to find at either of my local craft stores and found these while shopping out of town. I now have a source online that I can order from in the future. But in the past when I had a bead color on hand that I wanted to use and the needle was too big for it to slide over, I would hand string the beads onto the threads! Ack! Can't picture doing that now, this is way easier! I definately think there is some level of craziness that comes along with the desire to create such small things! LOL!

I just finished up four brand new Arabian presentation sets today. These are a new style for me. They are native-inspired with a little added bling. Each set features real swarovski crystal decorations embedded into intricate silver findings to create a unique frame for each crystal, alernated with hand-sculpted, baked, and gloss cowrie decorations made to replicate the ones seen on real native sets. Tassles are hand-brushed for a silky effect and each comes out of a thin, long bugle bead for a nice lined-up appearance. Each nose chain has hand-sanded shark teeth decorations for the ultimate protection of the model horse's finish, and small diamond shaped findings with little gemstones attached to either side to add extra sparkle!

As you can see I also added a new horse to my collection: Renovatio a.k.a. "Reno" sculpted by the talented Debbi Lermond! Very excited about him! I have plans to have him painted a very light dapple gray with a long flowy white mane and tail out of mohair. Haven't seen a mohaired Reno yet, so it will be fun to give this a try, and yes, I will probably do the hair myself!

These sets are currently forsale for more information on purchasing you can contact me at: melissa@adivaarabians.com