Presenting....a presentation set!

At last! The arabian presentation set is complete, except for the chain/lead, which is waiting for me to order some really fine chain.

Last time, we saw the making of conchos for the halter and breastcollar. Since then, they were attatched, along with some "gems" from the dollar store for the collar, and some poms poms for the halter.

The headstall needed another thing as well, a noseband! Small chain can be made using wire, a thin object, shears and pliers.
I started by wrapping my wire around a toothpick (a long pin will make smaller chain, but my wire was a bit too thick for that).

Then, cut up the tube made from the wire with the shears . This will give you lots of small, imperfect, jump rings.

Shape them with the pliers, and join them in a line to make your chain, simple, right?

Some costume makers will have a noseband as wide as three chains, but this time I used two (one was just too skinny)

Then all that was left was pom pins and trimming all those tassels. I used altered store bought pom poms, in the smallest size available. I did try making my own from scratch, but just was never happy with the results.... You can also see how much length was taken off my tassels, with the breastcollar ones slightly longer.

Well, that's one project down. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, as a first attempt. I think on my costume, I'll want to find a different way to make the breastcollar base, and experiment more with tassel creation. I will say that two things definitely helped the stress level through the end of this :)

We found the top little guy at a local donut shop (along with every other kind of rubber duck imaginable). And though I'm really not an ale person, this stuff was good! Tonight I may work on some easy props, or get things going on my practice English saddle.