Vintage Backdrop

I have been thinking about ways to spice up my Etsy shop lately.  I like my graduated backdrop, especially for gallery shots but I was getting a little bored with it.  I decided to grab this vintage table with a distressed mirror top out of the dining room and take it outside.  What a refreshing change!  No lights to deal with and I love the way you can see the bottom of the piece reflected back from the mirror.

Throw in a fall leaf and get a little bokeh going and I had it made.  I like this image so much I want to frame it and hang it on my wall!

Another Etsy Treasury

 

I have been getting into a lot of Etsy treasuries lately.  This is a really nice fall themed one by Caitlin Sainio.  Besides playing around working with my Etsy shop I have been busy getting ready for BFA open studios the end of October.  I have about 4 or 5 different projects underway.  I have slip cast pieces, platters for decoration with terra sigillata and mishima, and thrown forms to assemble into sculptures.  Right now I am working on how to get them all to look like a cohesive body of work which I think I will do using the biomorphic imagery that I am so interested in.  Keep your fingers crossed that i will remember to take my camera so I can get picks for everyone:)  Have a great hump day!

P.S.  My piece is the Tomato Red Vase,  just in case you were wondering.  Peace.

I'm in an Etsy Treasury

My Autumn Gold Sauce Bowl made it into this lovely treasury by Nikkoblue.

Fall Chestnuts

 

Well, you know fall is here when the chestnuts start popping out of these ridiculously menacing seed pods.  I dare you to pick one of them up!  Ah, the squirrels are so happy.  All the nuts, pecan, almond, walnuts are ripening and the critters are harvesting for the winter.

 

Here are my slip castings in progress.  Right now I am making a bunch of forms and storing them damp so that I can decide how I want to put them all together.

Here are some of the forms that I did bisque before I decided to wait on that.  I have been moving them around in different configurations to see how I like them.  These have wholes in the back so that I can mount them to the gallery wall.  I will be using these for my BFA culminating exhibition in the Spring.  I'm a little anxious and a little excited all at the same time.  Wait, make that a lot anxious and a lot excited!  Phew.

Laser Toner Transfer Decals

Here are some more experiments with the laser decals.  I used a black and white photo that I took to make the decal.  I increased the contrast a bit before printing it out.  I love the way this works.  These are water slide decals.  The toner in the in the laser printer has to contain iron and it has to be a black and white only printer.  At Chico State we get our transfer paper from Bel Decal.  Here is some info on the process from Ceramic Arts Daily.

I actually layered this transfer over another image making technique.  This drippy, black, organic shape was created with a photo lithography technique similar to the one I was using last semester.  This technique is done on leather hard clay while the decals go on top of the glaze. This time, instead of using xerox copies, I used Pronto Plates and drew the image directly onto the plate with a sharpie marker and then inked it up with the linseed oil/mason stain ink.  Pronto Plates are are made of polyester and the technique is referred to as polyester plate lithography.  It is well adapted to use with clay but I would suggest trying it out on a flat tile instead of a round cylinder.  The plate is like thin plastic and likes to spring back when trying to wrap it around something.  This image is nice and crisp with the right glaze.  I did about six tumblers with the image and this is the only one that ran.  Glaze matters.  This is the only one I used a different glaze on.  But I can't remember which one!  I kind of like this drippy, ethereal thing going on.

This test is interesting, not because the tumbler is so wonky, but because I layered a celadon over mamo and it crazed a lot at the bottom where they overlap.  The crazing caused the decal to split apart along the craze lines.  This could be used to create some way cool effects. 

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  I took the day off to be domestic.  Lol, like running around town shopping and then cooking is taking the day off.  But I had a good time and that's all that matters.  Oh, I did sneak over to the studio and unloaded some kilns, but that only took an hour so it doesn't really count.  Can you blame me?  I had to see how my stuff came out.  Delish!

Too Much Fun

I have been having way too much fun in the ceramics studio lately.  Of course we had a critique for class that was coming up so that kept me pretty busy.  I think I have had the most fun with the laser decals I have been designing.

Here are the results of two different deer images I have been working with.  I'm loving this process.  These two pieces are going to go on Etsy tomorrow for a test run. Our instructor got a laser printer for the class since the print shop changed the ink.  I'll have to write more about this process later and put in some links to resources but I've been going full steam ahead today.  Fired the kiln, helped mix 600 pounds of recycled clay, mixed a batch of casting slip, had a ceramics photo shoot.  And, oh yeah, got my NCECA student exhibition entry in an hour and a half from the deadline! Have an excellent weekend.