Band-Aid

After finishing such pretty necks last week, how about another pretty option to put on top of them? I covered sculpting basic long manes a few weeks ago, and it’s the prerequisite reading for today’s post.

I figured I’d class it up a bit this week and cover banded manes. Banded manes are a grooming style common in showing western pleasure, halter, and showmanship. It pops up in other weird places from time to time as well, such as Hunter Under Saddle:

Dress(age) for Success

I’d love to take credit for this entire technique, but the very basic idea has been around in the hobby for years and years. I discovered it in old edition of JAH, way back in the days when it was pocket sized and printed in black and white. If I can find it during the course of my packing, I’ll post the edition number and author’s name for y’all. I don’t own the copyright to the article, so I can’t post the whole thing here. I’m getting rid of my collection of back issues of JAH as soon as I can find them all, so keep an eye out for them on MH$Ps if you're interested.

Over the years, I’ve seen some really amazing sculpted braids. My hat goes off to those artists as they are far braver and/or more patient than I am. I’ve tried it, but the strands always break on me or get blobby or turn into a giant mushy mess.

So I prefer the floss technique:

The Mane Event

Like tails, I’m breaking the topic of manes up into several different posts. I can’t guarantee I’ll post them all back to back, so I broke the subject down by types. During the series, I’m planning to cover: