What's in a Name - Specials 2018 - 2020

The first year, there weren't any specials, but the next year I managed to get a little better organized and was able to produce a few. More recently I've managed one special release per month, excepting January & the Persie month.

Dream a Little Dream - Vintage Dream Ponies

Back in the early days of the brand, when Dream Pony and Magpie had a larger staff and more energy, it was possible to order custom painted models. These days, we have a staff of one - me - and the last custom order I took on just about drove myself and my family around the bend. 😄

One never knows what is going to pop up next in the Magpie Collectors Facebook Group; in July of 2022, a lovely little group of 1980s Custom Order Dream Ponies went up for silent auction.

What's in a Name - Personality Collection Fifteen (2022)

 The theme for this year was "flowers in songs from the 90s". I was listening to a lot of music while painting; I prefer audio books while I'm working, but when the air compressor for the airbrush kicks on, you end up losing whole paragraphs in a story, so music is better at that time.

Summertime - the Painting Season

 I work in our wash house which we converted into a painting studio for me. Though it's very well insulated, it's unheated, so I can only paint when the weather is warm enough and fairly dry. My painting season stretches from around May through September, and in this time I have to paint all the models to be sold throughout the year.

Wintertime - Shell Preparation

 In January I take a little break in the Specials schedule to recover from Xmas and deal with the winter birthdays. At the end of the month I start preparing the shells for the year's models. This process goes on through the spring!

Colour Gallery: Chestnuts

 The Magpie shell colours have come in a range of variations over the years. This is a collection of the Chestnuts in the Magpie Archive (plus a couple of models who were only passing through on their way to Australia)

Donation Models: 2017 - 2022

 When I started selling painted models in 2017, I decided to offer a limited number of models as donations to live shows around the UK. These are usually used as raffle models by the show, but there are no conditions placed on them other than they need to be used as some sort of prize to benefit the show.

When the donation model for the year is announced, show holders are asked to message me with the name and date of their show and the website or FB group if one is available. After I select the shows, the models are sent to the show holder, completely free of charge. 

Like our regular models, each donation model is numbered and comes with a certificate of registration.

Spring Foals: 2020-2021

One of my first plans, after we bought Magpie, was to pick up where Emma left off on making look-alike foals for the Persies and Specials. I made a spreadsheet of all the Magpies and started planning names and colours. Some foals I've skipped as they're too close to other ones already produced.

Each foal is as as close to its parent as I could manage, some are more successful than others depending on how good my reference pictures were and how well I remembered the colour while mixing paint. Some are closer than others, but I think they all turned out pretty cute.

Easter Eggs: 2018 - 2020

During the painting season, I create a small number of one-of-a-kind models. Most of these are testers for a particular colour or technique. Every so often one of these special, one of a kind models can be found hidden somewhere around our corner of the internet; the first one to find it may buy it. Like our other Magpies, an Easter Egg model is numbered and comes with a certificate of registration.

I was originally going to name the models after different dying techniques, but that quickly evolved into types of fabric.

Look Alikes - Mellow Cremellows

 There are some Magpies which are harder to tell apart than others. Today we present to you the vintage Cremello Arabians of Magpie.

 The first cremello was the Newsletter Special "Cremello Arab", which was available from March through June in 1991. According to a later newsletter, only 27 of these models ended up being made. 

Unfortunately, we don't have a picture of this model yet and have to rely on the description provided in the newsletter advert: "A pearly cream with flaxen mane and tail and blue eyes"

What's In A Name - Personality Collection Fourteen (2021)

 This year, the Welsh pony model dictated the name theme. I had decided years ago when planning my set of Fjords, that I wanted to name them all after birds; the chestnut dun was to be Mallard. I tried several bird themed names for the other two models, but they didn't feel right. So, I went with the other Mallard - the steam locomotive. 

 That's right, the theme for P14 is "steam trains"

What's In A Name - Personality Collection Thirteen (2020)

Despite all the chaos of 2020, this collection was actually the one which gave me the least amount of grief. The airbrush and weather both cooperated, the colours turned out the way I imagined, and there were no disasters. The theme for this year was "dysfunctional relationships" and was inspired by the Dave Matthews Band song "The Best of What's Around". There's a line in the song "Whatever tears at us" which always sounds like "Galatea" to me, so I started with that and fit the other names around hers. 

What's In A Name - Personality Collection Twelve (2019)

With my third Personality Collection, Collection Twelve, I was starting to feel a little braver and branched out into some more complicated colours. Some difficulties arose as, by the time I had finished painting, the summer had turned incredibly humid, so humid that I could not spray the clear coat without it clouding, so I had to brush it on in the house. Getting it to go on evenly and keeping it hair free was a major challenge with the amount of shedding done by me and the cats around here. 

  The theme for this year was "literary characters".

What's In A Name - Personality Collection Eleven (2018)

Personality Collection Eleven was my second collection and was released in 2018. 

Producing this collection was a little less fraught than the first. Instead of trying to make thirty models in each colour, I scaled it back to ten of each. I switched from enamel to latex paint, which was easier to source, store, mix, spray, and clean. Since the viscose worked out so well with P10, I decided to stick with it and ditch the nylon completely. Lastly, I went with the closed-shell production method which meant the models were all glued together before painting, which made life so much easier. 

 Unlike the previous and subsequent collections, there was no naming theme for this one. 

What's In A Name - Personality Collection Ten (2017)

Personality Collection Ten was released in 2017 and was the first collection released by myself as the new owner of Magpie. The colours were fairly simple as I was still coming to grips with the airbrush and enamel paint.

With this first collection, I stuck to the instructions provided in the big Magpie binders written by Emma Kelley, the first owner of Magpie. The models were painted with Humbrol enamels and sprayed in two halves. They were then detailed, haired and finally, assembled - a hair-raising process as any excess glue would take the paint right off. 

Half of the models were haired with nylon wigging (hair sewn into strips and pre-cut to length) and half with viscose, which was much easier to work with and became the standard for later releases.

The models in the P10 collection all had names relating to Angus county.

Announcing Personality Collection Fourteen

Does anyone have any guesses as to the naming theme of this year's Personality Collection? 

 

What's In a Name - Personality Collections Ten - Thirteen

With the upcoming release of Personality Collection Fourteen, I thought it would be fun to revisit the previous collections. If you've met me you know that besides making terrible puns and painful dad-jokes, I love a theme. With that in mind, would anyone care to have a guess in the comment section at the themes of Personality Collections 10 - 13?

Personality Collection Ten: Ghost of Glamis, Lunan Bey, Kirriemuir Skirlie & Neep

Flashback to the Studio - 2017

While waiting until it was time to upload the web files for the Personality Collection Thirteen release, I decided it was probably time to organize and clean out the Magpie files since the last time it was done was, uh, never.

It turns out I've taken a good few studio pictures over the years and I thought it might be fun to select a handful from each year and share them here.

Hairing With Mohair - Braided Tail

 Creating a snazzy braided tail is surprisingly easy. You will need the following:

• A strip of mohair or viscose hair swatch long enough and wide enough for a tail
• A pipe cleaner close to the colour of the hair
• Scissors
• Tacky glue 
• Sewing thread to match the hair
• Needle
• Embroidery thread to match the hair
• A fine-tooth comb or clean, dry toothbrush
• Clothes pin or other strong clip
  

Introducing Personality Collection Thirteen!

After a bit of a delay due to the plague, Personality Thirteen is set to be released Sunday, October 18th, 2020. As usual, it consists of three models - Hunter, Arabian, Welsh Pony - in unique colours. Ten of  each model has been produced and is individually numbered and comes with a certificate of registration.