Remember this saddle from months ago and how I didn’t have a model for it?

At Build The Barn Live, I bought myself a Pebbles Arab mare to wear the tack. She’s a past Design A Horse.

And since buying the mare, I think I’m going to give a go at Pebbles Sized Performance. Imagine the possibilities, minus the space! So between the slot of getting home from school, going to work, and working on a girth, I decided to make something for my mare. Since I have a western saddle, western should come first. So I decided to make a pop the balloon prop for her(she needs a name!).
So I grabbed my plastic/fake grapes. I use these for balloons since reading about them on a dollhouse website. They’re cheaper and you get more. Plus no shipping! And they’re really flexible.

So I painted them and dyed the wood (my friend Lizzie of Blue Spring Stables first had the idea of dyeing the wood, since it wouldn’t get as dirty as white).

And glued them onto the wood.

I took it a step farther and made a stablemate sized one.

Glue will dry clear, so not worries there!

Next step of performance: dolls
Tiny dolls.

A very bad pun, since I’m pretty sure the song had nothing to do with ice.
After reading Jennifer Buxton’s post about making ice props, I decided that I wanted ice too. Plus it looked nothing like a harder project, like a jump or scene. So after some research and a quick trip to the store, I made myself a bucket of ice.

When I was small-ish, there would be commercials 24/7 about a substance called Moon Sand(I was shocked to google it and see that it is around still). It was advertised as being sand you can mold. I never got any but thought it was cool.
Like most things (like Furbies) the high comes and goes and years later a similar product comes out (Furbies will always be creepy to me.)
Kinetic sand is the new moon sand. I don’t have a clear memory of playing with moon sand but for the past couple of months, Michaels has been tempting me with the sand by having it right at checkout. And they had it open so that you could play with it.
Today when I went to Michaels it wasn’t on sale anymore( the sale took 1 dollar off) and now could use the much better coupon on it! So of course the only logical thing was to buy 2 lbs of it.

It’s a wonderful substance that doesn’t even feel like sand to me. It’s better than actual sand because it doesn’t make a mess. So yes, I was a 5 year old in gleeful play land with this stuff.

It holds its shape well. It you smash it together into a ball, it will hold its shape well. But once you press hard into it, it will lose its shape and flatten out.

My sister made a turtle out of it.

And it plays nice with models of the horse variety and other kinds of miniature animals.

 The good thing with this(2 lbs) is that it is enough to cover a traditional size area.

So in review:
If you show performance and use sand, coffee grinds, or footing I would recommend this. It is easy to clean up, so you wouldn’t have to worry about a mess( I played with it on the dining table, which in terms of crafts is not allowed. But Kinetic sand didn’t leave a mess on it). Kinetic sand holds its shape and is in scale.