Carousel Horse Suncatcher

by Debbie/Dragonfly Treasure

3 Materials

What to do with a pretty Carousel Horse that needed a new life?
I thought about this for quite a few nights.
All I could picture in my head was the horse flying in air with ribbon streamers flowing down, kind of like a Maypole.
Why?
Who knows!
This was too fancy of a horse to just has ribbon streamers!
Then my dim light bulb finally shined - a suncatcher!
Ah, crystals, shiny beads, and of course a few ribbons ~

Excuse my mess- I'm creating here!

I gathered any and all supplies I thought I could use; beads, prisms, ribbons, all kinds of adhesives, chains, cording, millinery, ~ it looked like my craft totes tossed their cookies!

A gorgeous horse, I wanted to do her justice

I studied what she was wearing. I wanted to enhance and maybe change it up just a tad.

So glad I could adjust these

I noticed was that there were roses decorating her here and there. I grabbed some small ribbon roses I had, but they weren't small enough. So I cut them down to size and glued them on

More aqua please!

I only had purple ribbon roses.

The main colors of the horses garb is purple with some aqua.

I really wanted to bring more aqua out, so I painted some aqua.

Swish* swish* swish*

Then it hit me! DUH!

I had forgotten I had just hit the best Estate Sale of a crafter, the day before and hadn't unpacked yet.

I started digging and came across these darling cascading millinery flowers. I thought they would be perfect to drape over her tail - that's when I realized I was adorning her like a parade horse!

That's OK, I love the horses in all their parade costumes/gear. :)

Just love this cascading effect

Aren't those cascading flowers perfect?

I love them!

I remembered I had a beaded decoration leftover from a non-functioning pen. That's the 2 short dark purple bead strands with bells on the ends that you see on this side. They are attached to a lavender flower which has a bow on it.

Some didn't want to cooperate

~ Next was the most difficult part ~

Hence probably the reason for not many photos

Threading the prisms, spacers and beads

Attaching them where I wanted them

Trying to get the end bows to look a like

And just plain wanting it all to turn out to be what I could see in my minds eye ~

I found a bead with a big enough hole!

Not done yet.

After attaching the bottom streamers I still needed to add two more "prism danglers'' to the center post. After a bit of finagling I got it just right but wanted it to be a little more secure than just tied and glued. I found a lampwork bead at the bottom of my stash that had a hole big enough to fit the pole, Amazing! Added a touch of glue and felt much better.

Twinkle Twinkle Aqua Star

Next was to finish off the end of the pole.

I encircled it in a strand of tiny gold beads ending with an aqua star

and an iridescent bicone bead.

Done? Uh, something is missing ~~

I know!

Glitter nail polish on the roses!!

*Here she is in all her glory*

She was hanging near a window and when the sun came in the colors that came shining through were wonderful.

Chimes

A small breeze came up and she began to jingle too.

Suncatcher

A sweet light jingle with rainbow colors and ribbon streamers.

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4 comments

William on Sep 10, 2016
Such a great ingenious idea! I love it! I have three of these horses from old music boxes. I make music/jewelry boxes. Didn't know what to do with the horses. My granddaughter is is planning to go to horse training college and veterinary school. I think she'd love this! I'm stealing this idea!

2 Reply
- Debbie/Dragonfly Treasure on Sep 11, 2016
  Awesome! This horse came from a broken music box - I couldn't bare to throw her away! ♥
  
  Like
Cori Widen on Sep 11, 2016
Clever! And adorable :)

1 Reply
- Debbie/Dragonfly Treasure on Sep 11, 2016
  Thank you!
  
  Like