This was my last big project. I completed it about a year ago. I just haven't had the where with all to photograph it till now.

I did this as a contest entry for a club event last year. Its based extremely heavily on ancient Scythian ceremonial tack designs.

This is a full skill set piece (ie a demonstration of all my major skill sets). The saddle is wire embroidered leather, as is the face piece. The horns are steel soldered on brass. The back piece includes both embroidered leather with tassel cut leather (wrapped with size 6 brass "seed" beads) and horizontal dream caster stitch in black wire with gold Delica seed beads. The mane and mane ornament are leather, as is the tail. The tail is also wrapped in leather with beads at the top and bottom. The chest ornament is Lost Wax Cast brass over a wire core. I coated the wire core with bees wax and then hard wax over that. The hard wax allowed me put all the ornament onto the piece. The large beads on the breast collar are Lost Wax Cast brass from my personal design.

On that note, I can cross "hand drilling beads" off my Crafting "yes I did it...and I am never doing it again" list. My mother said it sounded like I was torturing someone while I was doing it. She was right I was...Me (or at least my ear drums).

Actually on that note, I am adding "working with THAT much brass" to the list too. My jewelry teacher, who did the actual hot metal part of the casting, told me "never again" when it comes to casting in brass. Brass is much more toxic at temperature than any other metal I would cast in...it contains Zinc and Zinc is toxic at casting temperatures. I only used the brass so it would match the sheet metal and wire I used (all the scrap metal from the cutting was what was used as the casting scrap).

The figurine is wire core with fabric skin, the hooves are wire with leather wrapping. The mane and tail are leather. The ornamentation is a mix of leather, copper core-colored plastic coated wire (light blue, red and black coatings depending on location), brass wire, hand made brass beads, Delica seed beads and brass seed beads.