Post by astudyinscarlet on Jun 29, 2019 12:35:12 GMT
I thought I should probably introduce some Julips most of which aren't actually that new but have never been introduced. Some of them in particular do have a huge amount of sentimental value to me.
Jester! He's a portrait of a dark mealy bay Fell pony who was one of my favourite real horses way back when I used to ride. With Julip moulds and colours and extras (like feathering) being so limited for most of the time Annabel ran Julip I wasn't able to get a decent portrait model of him until recently. (He was my Christmas Julip last year)
Fly-by-Night. My birthday Julip this year. Based of course on the pony from the book of the same name because I've been on a real nostalgia trip this year reading some of the old pony books from my childhood. He's a bay roan but roans tend to change colour a lot between their winter and summer coats so there are times when they can appear almost solid coloured and times when they're closer to white with dark points. The description when Ruth first sees Fly in the book sounds like he's in a sort of 'in between' stage where he's only partly roaned so that's the kind of roan I wanted in Julip form.
Then by chance I acquired both another bay roan and a bay. I had some money from selling off a load of other models so when the spares night was announced I hoped I might stand a chance at getting something but actually had no expectations of doing so given the history of spares nights. But I thought if there was a foal or yearling I'd probably like to try for that. And it turned out not only was there a foal but it was actually probably my favourite of the spares and miraculously even though she went in seconds I got her!
This is Sparrow
And I wasn't intending to get her a mum then but another spare was sold that night who I also fell in love with and I tried to resist her but a minute passed and nobody had grabbed her and I actually went back to her three or four times and still she was unsold so I finally gave in and decided she was meant to come to me. So this is Wren:
Both
Wren reminded me a lot of one of my favourite Julips, Robin the CJP (who I named that because when I got him there were robins nesting in our conifers) hence the bird-themed names. I think Robin and Wren must be brother and sister.
And another (semi)portrait of a real pony I used to ride. This is Bik Bok.
Like Jester, this is the first time I've got a proper Julip portrait of her. I got quite emotional seeing her because real Bik Bok was the sweetest pony but much of her life was tragic and sadly she never really got the good life she deserved and that still upsets me how badly she'd been treated and how desperately unfair her end was even though it's over 25 years since she died. She was starved almost to death by a previous owner but she was rescued and fed up and seemed to be doing well in the riding school, except that she kept stumbling. One day I went to the stables and someone told us that sadly Bik Bok had had to be put down. Basically I think because she'd been so badly starved previously she'd suffered some kind of long-term vitamin/mineral deficiency which had caused irreversible damage to her bones so in her feet in particular the bones were just crumbling away. There was nothing that could be done for her.
On a lighter note, I love Julip Bik Bok so much, she's super cute. I don't have any pictures of the real pony so her markings are largely made up but she still feels exactly like Bik Bok to me, only hopefully Julip Bik Bok will have a much happier life. She arrived with a spaniel companion who I think she possibly now thinks is her baby due to the similarity of colour. The spaniel's name is Lettuce.
The story behind this is: there's a house I go past often where they have a black and white spaniel. One day while walking my dog Bertie we saw this spaniel out with someone and we found out the spaniel's name is also Bertie. But Spaniel-Bertie is scared of my Bertie and the first time he saw my Bertie he refused to walk past him and so the woman with him said something to him like "You're a right wet lettuce" so now I'll forever know this dog as Lettuce and mostly I just thought it would be funny to have a Julip dog called Lettuce.
And finally, this one doesn't look like anything special but she also has huge sentimental value to me. This is Buddy the cat AKA Cat Friend
The dog is the one-eyed version of my old dog Dylan who sadly died last year. Despite being afraid of all other people, other dogs and even squirrels, he was mostly totally indifferent to cats and wouldn't pay them any attention. But on the road down to the playing field there's a black cat who is often lying out in one of the front gardens or in the road. Sometimes when I was taking Dylan that way it would come running over to us wanting fussing and after a while Dylan started wagging his tail at this cat. I'm pretty sure the last time he met this cat was only the day before he died. He was totally blind then but the cat came running over to us again and he still wagged his tail at it even then. So I really wanted to get a Cat Friend for my Julip Dylan. I don't know the cat's name but I named her Julip version Buddy.
(The nice thing also is that Bertie has also become friends with this cat, to the extent now that if he sees the cat even from way across the street he starts crying because he wants to go and see it. I suspect the cat probably liked Dylan better though because Bertie's much more hyper)
Jester! He's a portrait of a dark mealy bay Fell pony who was one of my favourite real horses way back when I used to ride. With Julip moulds and colours and extras (like feathering) being so limited for most of the time Annabel ran Julip I wasn't able to get a decent portrait model of him until recently. (He was my Christmas Julip last year)
Fly-by-Night. My birthday Julip this year. Based of course on the pony from the book of the same name because I've been on a real nostalgia trip this year reading some of the old pony books from my childhood. He's a bay roan but roans tend to change colour a lot between their winter and summer coats so there are times when they can appear almost solid coloured and times when they're closer to white with dark points. The description when Ruth first sees Fly in the book sounds like he's in a sort of 'in between' stage where he's only partly roaned so that's the kind of roan I wanted in Julip form.
Then by chance I acquired both another bay roan and a bay. I had some money from selling off a load of other models so when the spares night was announced I hoped I might stand a chance at getting something but actually had no expectations of doing so given the history of spares nights. But I thought if there was a foal or yearling I'd probably like to try for that. And it turned out not only was there a foal but it was actually probably my favourite of the spares and miraculously even though she went in seconds I got her!
This is Sparrow
And I wasn't intending to get her a mum then but another spare was sold that night who I also fell in love with and I tried to resist her but a minute passed and nobody had grabbed her and I actually went back to her three or four times and still she was unsold so I finally gave in and decided she was meant to come to me. So this is Wren:
Both
Wren reminded me a lot of one of my favourite Julips, Robin the CJP (who I named that because when I got him there were robins nesting in our conifers) hence the bird-themed names. I think Robin and Wren must be brother and sister.
And another (semi)portrait of a real pony I used to ride. This is Bik Bok.
Like Jester, this is the first time I've got a proper Julip portrait of her. I got quite emotional seeing her because real Bik Bok was the sweetest pony but much of her life was tragic and sadly she never really got the good life she deserved and that still upsets me how badly she'd been treated and how desperately unfair her end was even though it's over 25 years since she died. She was starved almost to death by a previous owner but she was rescued and fed up and seemed to be doing well in the riding school, except that she kept stumbling. One day I went to the stables and someone told us that sadly Bik Bok had had to be put down. Basically I think because she'd been so badly starved previously she'd suffered some kind of long-term vitamin/mineral deficiency which had caused irreversible damage to her bones so in her feet in particular the bones were just crumbling away. There was nothing that could be done for her.
On a lighter note, I love Julip Bik Bok so much, she's super cute. I don't have any pictures of the real pony so her markings are largely made up but she still feels exactly like Bik Bok to me, only hopefully Julip Bik Bok will have a much happier life. She arrived with a spaniel companion who I think she possibly now thinks is her baby due to the similarity of colour. The spaniel's name is Lettuce.
The story behind this is: there's a house I go past often where they have a black and white spaniel. One day while walking my dog Bertie we saw this spaniel out with someone and we found out the spaniel's name is also Bertie. But Spaniel-Bertie is scared of my Bertie and the first time he saw my Bertie he refused to walk past him and so the woman with him said something to him like "You're a right wet lettuce" so now I'll forever know this dog as Lettuce and mostly I just thought it would be funny to have a Julip dog called Lettuce.
And finally, this one doesn't look like anything special but she also has huge sentimental value to me. This is Buddy the cat AKA Cat Friend
The dog is the one-eyed version of my old dog Dylan who sadly died last year. Despite being afraid of all other people, other dogs and even squirrels, he was mostly totally indifferent to cats and wouldn't pay them any attention. But on the road down to the playing field there's a black cat who is often lying out in one of the front gardens or in the road. Sometimes when I was taking Dylan that way it would come running over to us wanting fussing and after a while Dylan started wagging his tail at this cat. I'm pretty sure the last time he met this cat was only the day before he died. He was totally blind then but the cat came running over to us again and he still wagged his tail at it even then. So I really wanted to get a Cat Friend for my Julip Dylan. I don't know the cat's name but I named her Julip version Buddy.
(The nice thing also is that Bertie has also become friends with this cat, to the extent now that if he sees the cat even from way across the street he starts crying because he wants to go and see it. I suspect the cat probably liked Dylan better though because Bertie's much more hyper)