Felt Firefly

Last year my internet friend MollyBot made me a ridiculously cute felt pokemon ornament for my tree and I have been debating trying my hand at a pony ornament for the last few weeks. Well I ended up at Michael's the other day with a 30% off coupon so I bought a few sheets of felt and some embroidery floss. Then I traced various pony parts from the vector images in the coloring book onto a sheet of paper and cut out around my "pattern".

The result was this cute G1 Firefly that I made for HipsterDerpy's birthday.

I am planning on making some other G4 styled ponies this way as I think it came out awfully cute! Of course I made several mistakes and I know for next time that I should work on the details first. I'm also interested in doing some ponies with felt hair and others with floss. I think the floss works really well with Firefly but it might not work so much with other ponies.

Brony Thanksgiving

If you had told me a few months ago that I would be spending Thanksgiving hanging out with bronies and talking ponies I would have laughed. Especially considering last year some friends invited Ben and me to a thanks-vegan celebration that didn't go over very well. However, after the last pony meetup we found that quite a few of us had no real plans for thanksgiving. I offered my apartment, we divvied up the list of common thanksgiving foods and prepared for Brony Thanksgiving. I made the turkey, surprise birthday cake for HipsterDerpy, and fluttershy-themed pumpkin pie. TPGFluttershy made casserole, a feat in itself when it is almost impossible to find anything brand name in the Bay Area, others brought even more food and Apple Cider brought some amazingly good apple cider! After food we chatted, played various games on the wii, and drew fanart until leaving to hit the Michael's (pony crafting supplies) and the 9pm opening of Toys R Us (sadly no blind bags or pony deals).

I'm thankful. Of course I miss my family in Ohio, especially around the holidays! But there is something really special about a group of people that came together because of mutual interest in something as unique as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and can not only pull off something as organized as Thanksgiving dinner, but that we can spend hours hanging out and feeling completely comfortable. Through the brony community I have found a few really good friends and that is something to be thankful for.

G4 Seaflower

Custom ponies are a big part of the My Little Pony community. I'm sure some people were customizing G1 ponies but I feel like the art really exploded with the release of G3 ponies. Of course really baity (bait or poor condition) G1 ponies are still customized, but I feel as though more people are looking at restoring G1 ponies (with the exception of extremely common ponies). I only really attempted two G3 customs and I don't think either of them came out particularly well.

When I got back into the community with G4 I wanted to be more active in the customization world, so I bought a random assortment of hair off of a collector that was selling it for cheap and experimented with my first custom pony. Later I was chatting with a friend from Ohio that also collects My Little Pony and was interested in customizing so we decided to do a swap. I picked one of her favorite ponies and she picked one of mine, we bought g4 ponies and then painted and rehaired them to look like some of our favorite old G1 ponies. We'll exchange them sometime next month when I'm home for christmas.



The pony I made for her is called Seaflower and her G1 counterpart actually has uv activated hair that changes in the sun. I couldn't get UV hair, so this pony just has normal hair. Honestly, I'm torn about Seaflower. She was my first FBR (full body repaint) and I made a lot of mistakes, but I think the end result is terribly cute! Anyway I hope my ohio friend enjoys her and I'll be sad to see her go. But I am working on another custom pony for a holiday swap.

Now to add a few layers of paint before bed and early morning ponies. I need to see if I can get the car to get to Toys R Us (TRU) where they are having a BOGO sale. (I won't buy the playsets at full price but I'll consider it at a discounted rate).

Brony Art Day

Oh geeze, I thought I would get to update more but I've been crazy busy this weekend! I have so many things to blog about, but I guess I should try and space it out a little. At least I got around to winterizing my blog!

Friday my brony friend Eliza (of Pumpkin Pinkie & NyanDash fame) came over so we could have a pony art day. The art I worked on was for a swap at the arena, so I can't share it yet, but we decided to do a personal swap and she already finished some of the art! So here are some amazing ATC cards she made while we ate pizza in my living room. My prompts were autumn and bluebirds with some specific ponies.

Lyra/Heartstrings

G4 Medley (wingless to match Noteworthy!)

Eliza has more awesome stuff at her Deviant Art account. And a little birdie (get it?) told me she may be taking commissions soon!

Dewdrop Dazzle

This pony is the reason I got back into collecting MLP. I'm such a sucker for blue & pink together. And it's hard to tell here, but I trimmed her mane a few inches and gave her a cute blue bow. Also, she comes with a little duck friend that I forgot to photograph.

Unfortunately this Dewdrop speaks a little of the quality control, as she has brown marks in her plastic that won't come out. I mean I guess when it costs less than a dime to make the pony paying someone to sit and pull of the defective ones becomes more trouble than it's worth. I ordered this one from the hasbro website (as she wasn't in my stores yet) but I was able to get a second one later.

Hasbro is having a 25% off and free shipping sale, but I could only get some wave 4, as most of them were sold out :(

ATC Art & 3,000 Hits!

My half of the ATC swap for Miss_Tuneful finally arrived so now I can share the autumn/halloween card I made starring her OC (Original Character) Neko. I also sent her some of my vintage blue ribbon I got from the lace museum, as it matched the blue of her character's bow nicely.

In other news, I'm thrilled that my blog has gotten just a tad over 3,000 pageviews. I know that is not all that much space on the web, but I honestly appreciate each and every one, so thank you for stopping by and looking.

I'm a little nervous about starting my new job today, but I think it will be a little better for me working on my blog and art so I am hoping to be updating more often now. <3

I'm on the Front Page of the Wall Street Journal!

The Berkeley Meetup was hosted by me, so I'm one of the four "pegasisters" mentioned in the article :)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203707504577012141105109140.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle

Blinded by the Light

When the blind bag figures were first released I thought they were cute but just too expensive. I figured there was no way I could get brushable sized ponies AND blind bags, especially since I would have to import them. I thought I learned something from pokemon and magic the gathering and forbid myself to have any. Several months later a set of 12 figures, the "mane" six and some other random ponies, came out as a toys r us exclusive. I decided to buy a set and distribute one figure to every brony that came to my meetup, and I kept a fluttershy for myself. I also kept the leftovers from the meeting, though I had them all wrapped so I didn't know what I would end up with. Now we have seen the leaked photos of blind bag boy ponies and I'm kicking myself for not getting into these to begin with. I mean they are just so small and I want to have them all!

I think I like the pegasus mold best. They just look so cute! Anyway I hope they show up in the US in full force soon (not just in a JC Penney's outlet)

It's the Great Pumpkin Fluttershy!

ATC: Fluttershys Pumpkin Patch by *Shaiyeh on deviantART

I love doing ATC swaps on the arena. Look at this amazing art I got from Miss_tuneful! And it's hard to know if you aren't holding the paper but that is pen and paint! I couldn't do something so complicated and tiny if I spent years at it!