the wooden horse

I saw this wooden ornament when I was out shopping, I can not remember where or how much I paid for it.
But I knew what I wanted to do with it.

Paint it! My Mother in-law has a 28 year old Paint horse named Apache. He is a pasture horse now and lives the good life. She had his mother as her first horse and has had Apache since he was born. 

This is the only photo I could find of old Apache and it was a year he got VERY skinny! He does not look this skinny now, he gets hay & grain daily and is back to his old self. But he will not be here forever, so I thought it would make a nice gift for my MIL.

I started out by painting the reddish part of the horse with an acrylic paint I bought 

at Joanne's called spice tan, It was a perfect patch!

Next I painted the main, tail and spots with Annie Sloan's Old White. Except i kept getting a pink cast bleeding thru. So I waited a really long time for it to dry and tried again. Still pink.

After painting this little horse 15 times, I decided to just add a little of the spice tan over the 

old white and give it a little wash. That worked. Plus it aged it a tiny bit.

I love how it turned out!

Now when Apache is gone, my MIL and the kids can just look to the Christmas 

tree to get a glimpse of the old Apache.

We will not be spending Christmas with my in-laws, so when they were here this weekend I gave 

my MIL the ornament I painted for her. She liked it very much!!

Have you made any of our Christmas gifts by hand?? I have really gotten into it this year!!

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