Rocking Horse Revamp

Around the time Michelle was an infant (for the life of me, I can't remember when I bought this!) I was treasure hunting (or thrift store shopping)  with my sister when I came across this guy for $20. I brought him to the register and to my surprise and delight, he was on sale for $14.

I had grand plans of sanding, painting, priming, and hair removal, but then life with a baby caught up with me, and he's been living in the garage ever since. That's almost two years, right? Sheesh, sorry horse!
On one of our trips home, I saw him in the garage and impulsively grabbed him and shoved him in the back of my Subaru (Charlie was thrilled. Made the whole car more cramped than usual).

He sat in my kitchen for two days, in which Michelle rode him, played with him, and chatted with him. I was excited that she liked him, but sad that I had deprived her of such a cool toy for so long.

He looks like a bull or some evil nobleman's horse. Haha, weird imagination over here.

Finally, I got to work, I started by ripping out his disgusting mane of rough, sticky, dirty yarn. Gross! Then I went on with removing him from the rocker and spray painting the base mint green. According to the spray can, the color is Catalina Mist. Cool.

Then I panicked. Did this color match his wood stain? They looked weird when put back together, but maybe they just needed a color in between. I decided to put that on the back burner and focus on his face.

 He already had plastic eyes glued on, but I drew around the eye and then filled it with white. I feel like it brought life into his eyes. Who wants to ride a soulless horse?! Haha ;-)

After that, I went on to add gold chevron/arrows on the base of the rocker to bring some continuity to the horse - the mint/teal felt out of place without some gold tying it all together.

I also painted his ears and the handles at his neck gold too - I really liked using that gold and I'm still looking around my house for things to spray paint! Who knew gold metallic spray paint was so much fun?

Then I taped off the leather on his saddle and painted the gold chevrons on there too. I was surprised how much it changed the feel of the horse. It gave it such a fun south-west vibe!

Like the lightning bolt scar? Harry Potter!

After all that, it was time for the mane and tail. I wish I took pictures of this step because I couldn't find anything online that really helped me, and there has to be someone else out there that could use the help too. Basically, I wrapped off-white yarn, mint embroidery thread, and gold embroidery thread around a cardboard square that was cut to my preferred size. Then I sectioned the "hair" and taped around the top.
To attach it to the horse, I hot glued the taped ends into the groove along the top of the horse's head. I glued extra pieces of yarn to cover any "bald" spots, or places where the tape was showing.

And that's about it!!

Have you noticed I've called this horse a "he" the whole blog? Well, once it was finally all put together, I decided it was too sassy to be a boy. So now it's a girl. Lol.

I wish I had pictures of Michelle riding it; but the only ones I have are of her pants-less or naked. Lol. Oh the life of a family with a nudist child ;-)