Heather's BCC entry

There was a point in time, about fifteen years ago, when it seemed like everyone who was anyone had a blog. 

Not gonna lie, I miss those days.

One of the blogs I most enjoyed reading belonged to a customizer named Heather Puleo. In it, she shared progress photos of her work, including a drastic Lonesome Glory-to-jumper that was forever being disassembled and reassembled. Even in its rough early stages, you could tell this piece was going to be awesome, assuming it ever got finished. That seemed unlikely, however. The resculpt was so dynamic and so complicated and Heather is so discerning. I wasn't sure it would ever be complete.

Well, never have I been so happy to be wrong! Take a look at Heather's 2026 BreyerFest Best Customs Contest Most Extreme entry.

The Seventeen Year Horse

by Heather Puleo

Way back in the ancient times (cough 2009 or so) I saw a picture of a jumper that just screamed I WANT TO BE A CUSTOM.

The twisty hind end, the neck being used as a counter balance after having flung themselves over the fence from a difficult spot, that horse was all athleticism and stunning.

Quick quick! Who can I chop up into this??

Enter one very tortured, errr, well loved Seattle Slew model on the Lonesome Glory mold. Leggy, refined, this would surely be perfect and fast.

Or more like a series of chopping, grinding, sanding, sculpting and hmmmming every so often for the next 17 years. I would occasionally pick it up and try and figure out what wasn't quite working. Spoiler, there was *a lot* that wasn't working but my knowledge base had not yet caught up to the vision in my head and in my ref. 

This year in March I decided I would try and enter the BCC again and give myself more than three weeks to complete a drastic CM 🤣 But what was I going to do? I have a laundry list of ideas at any given time but I pulled out the poor slightly mangled LG and was like. YOU. I will *finally* make you what I always wanted you to be. 

I managed to scrounge up the two missing legs too! But the head is completely mia. Oops. Fine we will make a new one, even though my preference is to use as much of the original model as possible in the final piece. I mean, if you haven't fought with the base model through every. single. step. of resculpting, is it even a custom anymore? I dont know but that's my crazy logic and I'm sticking to it.

Now someone needs an intense dremel session to remove all the old and honestly no longer good epoxy. Plus she was almost hilariously too wide in the hips and shoulders especially. A few holes are fine right? 

And then finally, we sculpt!

Sculpt the head some. Ooo, yikes…keep going

Checking for symmetry.

Putting legs on!

Taking legs off...

Making notes for adjustments.

Eets a Pony on a Stick

Making more holes.

More notes.

More legs.

And then the vision is finally in sight. This might just be doable! 

…..After another decapitation

The first two weeks of June were an absolute blur or sanding, smoothing, shaping ears, adding veins, hair, details and then finally paint and assembling the jump and getting last minute photos and tossing in the email under wire.

SO, FINALLY, seventeen years in the making, my vision came to life. Twisty, athletic, so very *mare* and a horse my heart would love to ride though my body would almost certainly be left in the dust LOL

OH! Two last things! Even though she is pretty much completely resculpted from nose to tail, her hooves are still original plastic (minus the bottoms which I detailed out)! 

I made sure to match the scale and size of the original model to the point that I could leave them and it amuses me to no end.

And secondly, a beautiful model like this deserves a beautiful name, but in the past few months she has decided to keep her “work in progress” nickname. And thus, she is The Great Cornponio.

Congratulations, Heather. I can not believe you finally this one. She is my favorite horse of this year's BCC season and was more every minute of those seventeen years. Good luck at BreyerFest!