Back to the Blogosphere

I'm back to my blog.  Sorry for the lapse.  I have no excuse.  Just wasn't feeling it I guess.

We had a great Fall & Christmas show season despite the temperamental weather, saw many old friends and made some new.  It never fails to thrill me when people react to my characters.  This Pig yarn bowl got glazed pink and I displayed him holding a ball of green yarn with the end coming out through his nose.  People were hootin' and howlin' at him!  Needless to say, he sold before I realized that I never took a picture of him finished.  Bummer.  I guess I'll just have to make more.

Clay stamps drying for the bisque firing.

In addition to the yarn bowl critters, I'm onto some new projects!

These little beauties are part of it:

 ->

I'm also trying my hand at mishima which is applying glaze or under glaze to a textured surface and scraping it off before firing leaving the color in the texture.

I LOVE this guy!  He's a watering can prototype but I need to redesign him a bit because he's not well balanced.  The glaze I used on him blistered a little so I ground it down a bit and re-fired him.  Disaster!  Totally blistered and I ended up chucking him out.  It's so disappointing but that's how pottery goes.  I usually don't get attached to my pieces but I had him in my home and smiled every time I went to water my plants with him.  Now he's gone.  So sad.  I'll just have to make him a brother.

Sucked into the mudS

Spring is SO distracting! Everything is blooming in abundance and all I want to do is play in my other favorite kind of mud: my garden!

Oh, my bleeding heart!

There are so many blooms on the azalea that it's sagging!

Lily pads ripe for pickin'!

We also had a couple of big orders that have been time consuming and I'm still giving lessons which is so much fun it's criminal to get paid for it!

I've been wanting to show you how my stamping adventure turned out but I wanted a pic of the Japanese ikebana vase.  I keep forgetting to dig out the epoxy to glue the flower frog in but you wouldn't know if it's glued down or not, would you? So here it is...

And the stamped mugs that didn't sell at the Wayne Valley HS show...

This glaze was too thin but shows off the stamps very well.

This glaze was a little thick and filled the stamps in too much.

And, of course, the ones that came out just right were sold!

I continue to struggle with my photography. My latest set up is on the front porch in the afternoon when the sun's on that side of the house. That might have something to do with why I haven't posted here or added too many new items to my shop lately. Timing is everything and who's home that time of the day?

I did get some birdhouses posted though.  Even after photo editing they still look too dark to me.  Any one have any tips they can share? 

I made a bigger sign for my show display. It's a bit heavy but much more visible.  What do you think?

Inspiration from Gary Jackson

I've been following Gary Jackson's blog for a while now.  The textures he gets from stamping clay is amazing.  He has hundreds of stamps he's made himself and uses different combinations to get beautiful effects.  So after oohing and aaahing over his work for ages I thought I'd have a go at making my own stamps...

...and having a go.  Getting the spacing down was more challenging than I expected.

 Can't wait to see how they come out glazed.