Oh.... Deer...!

 

Oh, Dear.....

Some of you, Dear Readers, might recall the Tiny Reindeer I rashly began to create a couple of years ago while I was working on an entirely other project. I had been building the "Ravenwood" kit by Robin Betterley, adding my own touches to their design, but the Holiday Season was getting under way and suddenly I found myself "testing" the possibility of making a tiny Sleigh with Reindeer for the "Secret Christmas House", another Robin Betterley kit I had completed a couple of years earlier. I had always wondered what it would take to make a Sleigh with Reindeer in 144th scale! In the above picture you can see the beginning of my first Reindeer... it is simply using the "glue trick" to model an animal body on paper covered florist wire. I had used this method to make my Tiny Ladies and their hounds and the teeny-tiny cat for the Secret Christmas House. There seemed no reason it would not work fine for little Reindeer! So off I went!

And very shortly had seven more reindeer skeletons under way!

(The long tail is just for holding purposes and 

will be trimmed off when no longer needed!)

 

The wires for the antlers needed to be attached 

before the glue was added for the heads...

 

Here you can see glue was being added to the bodies and heads.

It dries but doesn't shrink all the way away... 

it leaves "bulk" which is "the glue trick"!

I make sure not to glue the legs before shaping them.

 

Here is the first reindeer showing off.... 

even though his antlers have not been shaped yet!

And here you can see the rest of them 

have also been given wire for antlers

 and some glue to begin the body shaping.

And I regret to say.... 

that is as far as I got with the project that year.

Because ... as with so many of my "little" projects....

 this was going to take a while!

 

And Truly, I must confess, 

that one of the reasons I made no further progress 

was that I realized that my Reindeer are not "Reindeer"!

They never have been!

All the years I have been drawing

 and contemplating making little "Reindeer"

 what I have been drawing are really our local "white tailed deer"

 with brown fur, skinny necks and pointy horns! 

(Like Disney's "Rudolph" Reindeer!)

Oh DEAR!

What was I to do...? 

Change my "visions" now.... ?

In the middle of an already begun project?

Or just accept the fact that I am old enough 

that my "visions" were shaped from what I knew as a child...

 however inaccurate they were!

So these tiny reindeer, like Clement C. Moore's

 "Miniature Reindeer" are bona fide 

 "Northern American Reindeer"

(Just in case you wondered why they

 didn't really look like "Reindeer"!)

Because to make any progress at all,

 I had to decide what the horns would look like....

 

 I had only put four strands of wire together.... 

more would be too bulky... 

so the number of prongs is four on each side...

I think it is enough!

And they are positioned more like North American deer...

Here I am carefully adding a layer of glue to the wires of the antlers.

This was another step I was not sure how to do!

I don't want them to get too chunky or blobby....

But as it is drying it becomes translucent.... 

I won't really be able to tell the shape until I paint them.

And I needed to do this for all eight reindeer!

 

And I wanted to be sure the deer had ears...

 

Which I cut from a little punched "asterisk" shape...

Here you can see the paper ears gluing on the reindeer!

And you might not be surprised, Dear Readers, 

that my first attempt to make a sleigh... turned out too large!

At first I wasn't sure.... I thought I could get away with it....

Lady Evelyn de Paradise came over to help me decide....

With her in the picture it is clearly much too large!!

Here it is in front of "The Secret Christmas House"....

In case you had any doubts!

A smaller sleigh was ordered immediately!

It is about 1/3 smaller overall.

The runners are cut from card stock... by hand!

Then pieces of florist wire are glued to the runner shape.... for sturdiness.

And the braces too....

 

And then the top layer of the card stock runner is glued...

 making a "sandwich".

 

And then wire "struts" are glued between the runners.

And glued to the bottom of the sleigh!

And an extra layer of glue is added along the bottom of each runner.

Here it is compared with the first version....

And here it is with two of the "Reindeer".....

And Lady Evelyn agrees that it is much better...

It might not qualify as "Miniature" from her perspective...

(But she is only 1/2 inch tall... which is quite tall for that scale)

And meanwhile, the "Reindeer" are being given

 a bit more "bulk" to some of their parts...

In particular their necks.... 

which is why they are hanging upside down

 while the glue dries... 

(always waiting for glue to dry...!)

so it doesn't all sag down to the shoulders!

And I hope you will understand, Dear Readers, 

that while progress is finally being made

 on the Miniature Reindeer...

they might not end up looking like 

"Reindeer"

Oh, Dear!