Recycling of rocking horse

By Janne from Anno1808

One day I came across an old rocking horse at a flea market and bought it to take home. It just looked a bit too toy-like for me to have in my home. It went into storage for a while until I got the idea to repurpose it so it could be used as a decoration for Christmas, and of course the rest of the year.

You will need:

An old rocking horse
Polyfila or gypsum powder
Paint leftovers, here I have used lime paint in white, gray and brown
Brown furniture wax
Old board and an old list
Wood glue, small stiff nails
Drilling machine with a table
Possibly packing twine for new mane and tail
Bells, rustic rope and dried branches for decoration around the neck

Here's how you do it:

Start by “painting” the horse with a lot of polyfilla or plaster. This gives the surface a more rustic look, and it will be easier to cover the horse with paint later. When the plaster/polyfilla is dry, paint with a dark paint, either brown, or gray, or both. Finally, paint the entire surface a little sloppily with white paint, so that some of the dark paint shows through. Play with your paint and experiment until you find a color that you think looks good.

Now you saw a rustic board as a foot, and put two strips underneath so that the foot is raised a little above the tabletop. You can glue the strips on with wood glue or nail them in place with small stiff nails. This horse was attached with some screws to the wooden leg, so I made four holes in the board and put these screws in. If your horse doesn't do this, you can glue the legs on, or screw a screw up through the board from under the side and up into the horse's hooves. Then I built up a little more hooves with polyfilla to get a nice finish between the horse and the board.

Paint the board with white paint and patina it the same way as your horse. I glued on some extra mane and tail with some packing twine, which was also painted white like the horse.

Enjoy.