Cross Country Set Up

My cross country set up is now complete and ready to travel to Macclesfield Live on March 10th! I'm looking forward to showing it as a lot of effort has gone in! It's not going to do amazingly well but I would still like to get it out there!

First up the complete tack set:



As you can see it looks very nice on CRS Perfection!

The Bridle


The bridle is a grackle bridle with a D-ring snaffle bit. The bit is made by Rio Rondo and most of the hardware is also Rio Rondo hardware.



The small plates on the side are just cut off the outside of those sheets of etched buckles you get. A nice bit of recycling there! All the buckles are fully working and most also have keepers.

The front of the bridle has a little piece of sheepskin underneath to create a soft piece of padding for ponies nose:



Here you can see the other side. It's not fully sticky waxed down yet but will be by showtime!



The Boots


This was really daunting. I've never made boots before so I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out! I opted for open fronted tendon boots and bell boots on the front and full tendon boots behind. I decided that Ideal might need a little encouragement to get over the jumps :p




The front boots are made out of leather. The tendon boots have working buckles and a sheep skin lining. The bell boots do up with sticky wax as velcro would have added too much bulk to the boot.



The rear boots are also made out of leather and do up with sticky wax for the same reason as with the bell boots.



As you can see the straps go round and then have a flap to cover them:



This is a good close up of the buckles on the front boots:



The Girth

Another new area for me! I figured he should probably have a stud girth (he does actually have some little hand made studs that will be sticky waxed on at the show).

Breyer saddles don't have proper girth straps so I had to add in some proper one's so that I could attach the girth:



The girth itself is fully padded with felt and then stuck down around the edges. I cut a buckle in half to make the D ring so I could attach the breastplate. The padding was just two layers of leather so that allowed me to put the straps on for realism and to make the D-ring go through the leather:



Breastplate


The final item of tack was the breastplate. I make these all the time so nothing challenging here. It's pretty simple and has a little piece of sheepskin as the centre piece:



Working buckles and straps attach it to the saddle:



The Jump & Base


This isn't particularly complex! The base is several pieces of cardboard layered up to create a small ditch dip under the jump. It has then been covered with scatter to create a realistic finish:



The jump is made of logs stolen from the log store. There is a larger log on top, two offcuts to keep it raised and smaller logs either side of the 'ditch'. There are cuts of wood to act as pegs to keep it up:



The final details were added by creating the signs either side of the jump. Nothing special here just cocktail sticks and coloured card!



The Rider


The rider is a Breyer 'Megan' that has been partially adapted. The shirt was made by me and is literally held on by sticky wax! She has had a strap added to her hat and little spurs made out of wire:



To finish the detailing she has had a watch sculpted and her hands painted black to look like gloves. I also made her a little medical band by getting a piece of paper and covering it in selotape and adding a strap to attach it to her arm:



So finally....here are some pictures of the finished set up! I still need to get some photoshow shots of it but this should do for now!









As you can see the jump is pretty low as this is quite a low level set up! Hence the open fronted boots and the lack of martingale and over girth!