Horses Spread Holiday Humor

Article and photos by Traci Durrell-Khalife

Would you like to take some photos of your Breyer models with a "holiday card" feeling to celebrate the season, or perhaps share your love of model horses with friends and family during the holidays? You can! It's fun and easy to make personalized greeting cards featuring your favorite models with these photos. Just create a holiday scene using models, then photograph it, and turn it into a one-of-a-kind card. A customized portrait model of your real horse, or a Breyer that resembles your horse, would make your scene even more special.

I especially enjoy developing cute or comical scenes, but you could just as easily do more serious or traditional scenes. Plays on words and phrases from Christmas songs can provide inspiration for model setups. 

"Dashing Through the Snow" is simple theme to create. Choose your favorite running model and give it a snowy background and footing. Your background should be large enough to appear behind the entire scene. For Freedom Series (Classics/1:12 scale) and Traditional models, two feet is about the minimum width. Posters, enlarged photographs, and paintings can make great backgrounds. Calendar pages can also work for Stablemates models. If you're in a hurry or can find nothing suitable, a white or light blue sheet of poster board can do the job in a pinch.

There are several different materials you can use for snowy footing. Quilt batting is easy and neat; it's all one piece and doesn't shed. If your model won't stand well on it, consider cutting tiny hoof holes in the batting so its hooves can stand on the hard surface below. Synthetic snowflakes are attractive, but can be messy to clean up. Placing a large piece of white paper or poster board underneath your footing aids in clean-up and, because it is also white, it alleviates the need to lay down a heavy layer of "snowflakes."

There's an old joke about a pony not being a good ringmaster because he's a little hoarse. This can be adapted for the holidays when a cute pony tells their elf friend, "I'm sorry I can't go caroling with you, because I'm a little hoarse."

I used both quilt batting and synthetic snowflakes for the footing in this photo. A painting serves as the background, and a miniature tree rounds out the decor. The elf is a custom-dressed Breyer doll.

"Ho-Ho-Ho" requires three standing horses. Depending on your display props and the models themselves, you could attach the "HO" signs to a fence or stalls, on ribbons around the horses' necks, or tied/sticky-waxed to the tops of their tails. 

"Don't eat my nose!" is a light-hearted scene that's quick to set up. A ceramic snowman does the job in my scene, but you could easily create your own - or perhaps you already have a snowman among your holiday decorations. The real challenge may be matching the scale of horse and snowman. To make it more convincing, you also need to select a model whose muzzle is at the level of the snowman's carrot nose so they can appear to be eating it.

"A Visit from Saint Nick" shows Santa delivering apples to a nice pony in the pasture. This could be portrayed with a small herd of horses or ponies, but I thought the single pony had the most impact and put more emphasis on Santa. Santa could also be shown placing gifts under a tree near the barn while horses watch over the fence or from their stalls. 

A Breyer barn is an ideal setting for holiday scenes. "Deck the Stalls" is, of course, a play on the lyrics of "Deck the Halls." This scene shows a stable in all its decorated glory. The tree is decorated with a string of tiny lights, as is the board above the stall fronts. There are gifts under the tree, a wreath, and stockings to round out the decor. I went ahead and also added Santa filling the stockings, while the curious barn animals look on.

When a naughty pony escapes his stall or paddock and wreaks havoc in the barn, it quickly becomes "Wreck the Stalls." Quake Hold works wonders for temporarily hanging the lights and stockings and holding objects in the horses' mouths.

Scenes need not be limited to making cards. If you enter photo shows, there's probably a class, such as Scene or Other Performance, in which you could enter your picture. If you have the space, leave one or more of your scenes set up to decorate your home and enjoy throughout the holiday season. You might even be able to re-create it as a live show entry. Have fun spreading holiday cheer with your horses!