Henia - a pony with a royal pedigree

Henia with her twin pulled the Barbie princesses of the island carriage (2007). She was a palomino pony with pale yellow mane and a tail. This is how she looked in the announcement:

Barbie Princes of the Island carriage pony

She caught my eye on Vinted, it is one of the cheapest purchases, her price without shipment amounted to a staggering amount - 3 PLN (it is less than 1 USD). So she joins my budget purchases.

She came through Polish Post on June 8, 2021. - of course I had to pick the package up from the post office, because for the postman it was probably oversized. After all, it's a pony, almost a horse. It comes from the vicinity of Ożarów Mazowiecki (Poland), it came to me in good, condition, although there were remains of the tail, the mane was dirty and tangled. However, the plan from the beginning assumed a total metamorphosis.

This is what she looked like out of the box:

The first pony in this mold was Honey aka. Zucchero - a horse belonged to Skipper, and made his debut in 1982.

The first association I had with a pony, looking at her, was Haflinger, and this is also how the direction was chosen.

After the first session, I moved on to washing and detangling.

The mane was combed out, although the plan did not assume that it would stay on the pony. The tail was written off from the start and gave up easily as expected.

As with most new mattel horses, her eyes irritated me enormously - so I had to brutally get rid of them immediately after washing.

To my surprise, I didn't manage to wash them off completely. There were black spots left. She looked like an alien. And I put her nickname - Alien - in memory of those horrible eyes. .

Pulling out the tail and washing the eyes began the most brutal stage of restoration. The next step was to open the pony, that is, to divide it into two parts. Removal of the original mane and preparation for primer painting. After unfolding, I finally found the signing.

While my goddaughter was painting and powdering Henia's body with pastels, I was preparing her new mane and tail. And somehow I forgot to capture my work in photos. However, the process of painting and pigmenting a pony's body with pastels is immortalized:

After the last layer of pastels fixed with varnish had dried, I installed Henia's new mane and tail. And I put her back together. She could stand on her own feet again.

The mane and tail were made of hair ornament. It was a headband consisting of a braid connected to an elastic band. This mold has a disadvantage - the tail hole is very high and unnaturally set. Henia was my first full custom experiment, although I was irritated by this error, I decided to leave it as it was.. We had a lot of work to do with her anyway.

When Henia stood on her own feet, we can say - to paraphrase Vinted - she got a new life, so I also gave her a name that had to be royal - Henrietta Haflinger Princes Alien. Henrietta in honor of a certain German countess and cartoon character from BoJack Horseman, Haflinger is her new breed, Princes - because she once belonged to Princess Barbie, and Alien in honor of her cosmic eyes.

The next step of change were markings - on the legs and head. Painting was still done by my goddaughter.

The first eye and hoof painting was also done by Dorota.

The next step was up to me - time to work with a comb, thinning irons and scissors - a new hairstyle. First the mane:

And after it, a tail that was difficult to tame (that's why I had to weight it with a comb for the photo):

You can see on the dustpan how much hair I had to eliminate for Henia to have a perfect new hairstyle to match the purebred Haflinger.

After this stage, there was a pause for further work on the pony. During this time, Henia received a bridle. This is the first bridle that I have made since the bridle for the first Sun Runner.

Henia also has her reins, which I made for her a moment after making the bridle, but I haven't immortalized her in full tack yet. The second half of summer came and I left with my herd to a house in the country. There, a saddle pad was made for Henia, which I have not immortalized yet. I also started designing a saddle.

In the countryside, when I managed to get my head around my responsibilities, I started working on Henia's hooves and head. The eyes needed a little makeup, as did the snout and snore, and the hoofs needed some detail.

Finally, I had to paint her eyes again, because the attempt to apply the shadows ended up darkening the entire eyes.

After returning to Warsaw, I worked out the noses and the variation on them, as well as the frogs on the hooves. Finally, I fixed everything with varnish.

And Henrietta had a garden session in the autumn scenery.

She still has to wait for the saddle, she - herself has already undergone a metamorphosis and can enjoy her retirement in a new incarnation among other horses from my collection. Thank you for help - my goddaughter - Dorota.

Finally, a few before & after comparisons: