A whale of time.

I guess he's not really a fish. The tail isn't spread flat like a whale's...

Cute, huh? Made on the wheel in a couple of parts and altered. I have a whole menagerie starting in the studio.

My tray made it to the front page of Etsy this morning. Yay. It's still available right here.I made this little guy out of some felt I had laying around. Dudley likes him.

More animals to come...

Finished.

Everyone really seemed to like these, even before they even saw them finished. So, here is a finished set.Both sets are already sold and I don't have any more. I AM making more...I'm starting today after I write this. I'm still going to make just the solo owls because I prefer making them a little larger. People have also asked about different colors and I have pretty much decided that I will ONLY be making these with green. That color seems to suit them best. I'll also be making more owl vases. I have tons of requests for those as well. Again, as for color? Only blue interiors...Just give me some time. My last couple of kilns have been filled with orders for galleries and shops that carry my work and some special orders from Etsy. I didn't have a lot of time to play around with all the ideas I have drawn out in my sketchbook. I've been toying with the idea of really cutting out most of my "normal" work...like bowls and more simple vases. That will free up some time and some space in the kiln.

ALSO, I'm running a little Valentine's Day special in my Etsy shop. I've marked down everything with red, pink or purple, 10% off. Click here to see! And look at the new addition to the shop...can we say swans?

Stumped.

Actually, not stumped at all. I figured it out. I had wanted to design a sugar jar for my smaller owl pitchers and when a customer mentioned that she wanted one, it pushed me to finally do it. These are not something I will be making over and over again, so don't expect to see a lot of them. I only made 2 sets so far. One is already spoken for but if they both come out with no problems, the other set may pop up on Etsy...not sure about that though.

Everything is getting loaded and bisque fired tomorrow morning.

Finger cramp.

I'm quite happy with the amount of work I've produced in the past week. I had to "restock" all my tiny tripods, mod squares and gondolas. I've managed to make 60 tripods and about 25 each of the others...not too bad. I've also made a few special Valentine love bird sets. They have hearts instead of regular round eyes. I didn't match the carvings cause that's not what I wanted, but I plan on matching the eye colors. I'm only making a few sets. I don't really do seasonal things (the snowflakes don't count either cause I love snowflakes) and Valentine's Day stuff can be rather sickening, but I thought these would be sweet to make. You can also see some owls peaking out at the top.

I'm really loving the owls. I cut a strip of aluminum flashing that I use for mold making and made an owl cutter. I really, really like them. I decided that I would make the birds all year round since they go with all my other bird work.

I also made some swans. I had made the press mold for these a couple of months ago. I had only made one swan with it though. It went to Craftacular with me and sold immediately. So, I finally made some more. The bowl is press molded from a thin slab of porcelain and the necks are each hand rolled so no two are alike. I made quite a few fish bowls in between....not to mention, a bunch of custom orders, lots of vases, several owl pitchers, some owl cream and sugar sets----that's right, sets! Just wait until you see the sugar bowls!!

Oh, and as I mentioned before, I made myself take 2 weeks off from clay over the holidays. That didn't mean no creating. I did a lot of drawing and designing, a lot of knitting and sewing and A LOT of paper folding. This little guy took 300 pieces? to make. I can't remember. And once all the pieces were made it took a long time to put together. Thank goodness I have a good paper cutter, these are made with half squares.

I've been doing origami since I was about 10 or 11. I recieved a very good book when I was a kid that had actual photos instead of illustrations. It really helped me understand the folding a lot better than a bunch of dotted lines, dashes and arrows. Now I can read them all, but that book was the best. I got into 3-D origami around 4 years ago. I got a little obsessed and made 10 of these swans for the centerpieces at out wedding reception.

I made porcelain bases with built in vases in the middle to go up through the swans. Then I made TONS of origami lilies to fill them. Each swan was made of 297 (I think that was the number!) pieces of either red or white vellum. Yup, I'm crazy. This was the only pic I could find from the reception that even showed one of them! Terrible, huh? Keep in mind, we were married on the Empire State building and had the reception at our house a month later. No professional photos.

Anyway, more work tomorrow...made out of clay. Maybe I'll grab a shot of the cute sugar jars...

Oh! I've also been posting a bunch of sale stuff in my Etsy shop to clean up the studio shelves a bit. Some work is on SUPER SALE so go check it out!

Press-o-rama.

I'm back in action. I've been back in the studio since Monday. I stuck to my guns and stayed away from making clay work for almost 2 whole weeks. I think that's the longest time away in 2 years!! I did, however, do lots of drawing so I have loads of new designs to play with. I also did a bunch of other finger cramping crafty things that I'll share in another post.

I received a couple of way cool presents in the mail this week. The first one was from Tildé, a fabulous shop in Portland, OR that carries my work.This came out a while ago and I kept meaning to mention it. I finally got the book in my hands to scan it. They misspelled my name...but that always happens.

The second present came by resisted mail from Portugal. I had forgotten about it until it arrived in a nice little box.A nice, big (almost too big to fit on my scanner) full page feature in the December 2008/January 2009 issue of House Traders. A very cool architecture and design magazine from Portugal. It's written in Potugese and then in English beneath...love that. And who was on the opposite page?Why, good old Jonathan Adler of course. Looks like I'm playing with the big kids now...lol. I hadn't really looked at his work in a while...wow, he's really cornered the entire world of 50s-60s ceramic design. Beautiful stuff, but it kind of takes the fun out of it. Hmm.
Anyway, a great finish to 2008. First, sharing a full page with Eva Zeisel, now this.