Patches and Polka Dots

A few OF arrivals to introduce this week, and for the sake of not flooding the blog with new posts all at once, I thought I'd make all of them share one together.

Harecroft Gauntlet, aka Durham, one of this year's 'Best of Breyerfest' store specials. He was part of a set of five models, but I only really liked a couple of them (gloss and pearl paint put me off some otherwise pretty colours!) so I bid on just the ones I wanted from a split set on UK ebay, and was amazed to get this one for about 21p more than normal regular run SM price!

I haven't had dapples at Stablemate scale for such a long time, and it goes so well within the pinto patches, great little horse! I've long been fond of this mould, for several years I had a complete set of all OF releases, but of course these days there's a lot more exclusive and club models than there ever were, so I'm out of aiming for complete congas and just aim for nice long congas instead!

And here's his travelling companion, Viaje, renamed Harecroft Gleaming North. Not for a particular conga ambition (though technically, with the term 'conga line' referring to three or more in the same mould, I do have a tiny OF conga of them, as he makes it four!), I just fell in love with that paintjob and had to have him!

I love the detailed jagged markings, and the crisp masked edges - luckily the only slightly fuzzy mishap in the masking is on his mane, where the colours would be more softly mixed in a real horse, too, so he gets away with that!

Working up the Breyer scales, the next horse I have to share here actually arrived a while ago, but got missed out of my blog postings somehow.

Harecroft Happy-Go-Lucky, the regular run paint mare from last year. I liked her at the time but had run out of room for Classics and decided I really shouldn't have more - but then two whole new shelves happened, my classics got rehomed there, and there's now plenty of room for squeezing in a few more!

This mould is called the Running Thoroughbred, but it's really impossibly chunky in the leg for a TB, so I think this paint horse release suits it far better. 

And the biggest arrival, here's Lil Ricky Rocker, yet to settle into any of my own name ideas.

Another which I kind of liked at the time, this one I wasn't too sure about whether I needed, and somehow over the years he never worked his way up from being quite a nice Trad, to a wishlist model. But recently I'd looked at owners' own photos online and thinking I would like one after all, so I've been watching several second hand ebay listings and hoping that sooner or later, I'd catch a bargain. And here is that bargain, £20 less than 'new' price!

He's one of those models which don't have a notable good side - the mould is facing dead ahead, so there's nothing about the pose which makes me favour either way round to display, and his markings are just as nice both sides, too, so there's nothing to decide between them!

 

Some different angles, showing off all those wonderful spots. I'm so glad they went with a stencilled/masked template of accurate shape-and-direction spotting, rather than the paint-spatter method.
And I realised something surprising when pondering his imminent arrival - I don't have any other leopard appaloosa Traditionals! All my appaloosa Trads so far, whether OF or CM, have been blanket or semi-leopard patterns.

He's got such a nice face, the colour suits the mould well, and I love how laid back and cool he looks. I don't know how I spent so long thinking I didn't want to buy him!

Finally, just take a look at those eyes! I mentioned on a previous blog post how unusual it is to have the eye colour painted in for a regular run, a detail usually saved for the more important of the special runs, but occasionally cropping up in the ordinary range too. Here you can see he's not only got a pretty golden metallic brown eye colour, but carefully applied pink eyewhites, too.