On another note, more to myself than anyone else, DO NOT drop a box of pots then forget to write down which pieces are toast! Gah! Nothing like trying to fill an order only to find the pot you have just torn the place up looking for is GONZO.
Summer 'off the rack' sales have been slow, but the custom orders just keep coming! No complaints from me! There are 3 huge orchid pots in the queue, these two with trays, one without, as well as 6 different bonsai pots including a couple big slabs, 3 smaller pots, and a custom slab pot with a tray that I've got to build testers for (also known as bonsai accent planters! :) ) so I can test glazes for the customer. Something about having the pot built out of a clay that has caused some... well, shocking covers it... glaze issues in the past and new glazes. But it'll be fine, I'm not worried and actually expect the combo (grey clay with a cream glaze) will come out really nice!
On another note, more to myself than anyone else, DO NOT drop a box of pots then forget to write down which pieces are toast! Gah! Nothing like trying to fill an order only to find the pot you have just torn the place up looking for is GONZO.
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The latest little kusamono, this one is fun cobalt blue with drips of white. I've listed close to a dozen little pots like this one this week! There are several unglazed little egg shell shapes, and a few glazed ones in blues, and a really nice little gray and red one thats very striking! This one is a custom order, red clay and it'll get iron oxide to pop the detail. Still wet clay in the photo, you can see my hand for size comparison. The end size is supposed to be about 9 to 10 inches tall, 9 to 10 inches across and has close to 10 lbs of clay in it! Due to my own numbskullery, I had to remake this one. A big pain, but it served as a good lesson for a couple of new students in what NOT to do! Next time I'm planning to do that with something smaller though.... I got distracted while packing up to leave the gallery (something about the calendar NOT showing that the photography group was due in so I had to do a quick-bail) and forgot to cover it so it didn't dry on the form. Well, really I covered it then uncovered it to get photos for the customer and forgot to RE-cover it. The next day when I went in to take it off the form I was twitching a bit when I realized what I'd done.... NOT a happy camper! The lesson is, clay SHRINKS as it dries, and over a form is a BAD place for this to happen! Anyway, its re-built and drying slowly, OFF its form...I'll be changing out the wrappings for a few more days then it'll get uncovered entirely and hopefully fired in a week or 10 days. Here are a few of the little planters I did up so customers could get an idea of what they were for! They got a lot of comments, and were actually a pretty good seller! I might have to try planting some up with daffodil or crocus for the Christmas Bazaar. A small fairly traditional bonsai pot I planted with Black Mondo Grass, Alyssum, and an orange scented creeping thyme. A possible use for some of the bonsai pots I had, as well as a visual aid for the kusamono pots! I like this one! A pansy... This one has a nice blue flower, but, well, the blooms all fell off after I planted it! GAH! So its just a boring green plant. Oh well! A blob of alyssum I planted to demonstrate how muck works... Eventually the muck (in this case white clay mixed with chopped sphagnum moss) will grow moss and be a nice green mound in the pot. This one came out really well! The black mondo grass echos the charcoal grey from the pot very nicely! Admittedly, it'll probably outgrow the pot quickly, but the fact that I was running late sort of limited my choices! These are just some plants I had for the yard, but I like how this one came out. And I think it went pretty well! First year shows are usually rather mediocre, and I know this so I wasn't really planning to make a mint, although it would have been nice! I haven't actually DONE a show with JUST my pottery yet, although I've shown pottery with the rest of the Mudslingers and at the local 'Art and Garden' shows, and I've done traditional shows with my woodwork, so I had it pretty well figured out. So, this one involved breaking out the full booth then re-designing the setup to work with pottery. Well, I had to make a new table (one of the old ones has sat in the garage for too long and just needed replaced due to water damage) track down a key for the storage unit (not sure where the one I had is, but 'lost' covers it) and pack a ton of pottery that was NOT transportable. Watching a box of pottery go sliding off the tailgate was a bad moment, but I think MOST of it would have been ok except for the fact that it landed RIGHT on the curb in the middle of the end panel.
Setting up the tent again I did something stupid and didn't realize one of the cross bars wasn't properly seated in the corner piece. The top canvas wasn't fitting right, so I was wrestling it around because I thought it was twisted a bit. By the time I realized the problem was an extra inch across the front, one of the corners had ripped a small hole right next to the reinforced area of the corner. Joy. In case you don't realize from the photos, this is a SPENDY tent that I invested in years ago, so I'm more irritated about that than the broken items. I can remake those, but the tent means a repair that probably won't ever be as good as it was. Sigh. So, sales were pretty good the first day, slow today, but it went pretty well! Hauling stuff back and forth though was interesting, I now KNOW my toy truck holds about half what I could shoehorn into the suburban, so I'll definitely need a canopy for the back or a trailer if I'm doing anything out of the local area! I managed to get a complete inventory (boooooooooooring, I hear ya) done of the stuff I brought, also realized I have a box of stuff in the wind somewhere.... probably in the living room, but several pots on Etsy are in it. Yikes. BUT, on the plus side, I've got a lot of inventory I had lost track of and not listed.... And now everything is sorted into boxes so I can FIND it. Now I just need to move the pile of boxes from the driveway and put them someplace convenient.... :) |
Maryjane Carlson
Clay has always fascinated me, its many colors and textures, the shapes you can create using it, even the feel of it squishing in my hand. Even after years of playing in the mud I find myself exploring new ideas and I hope my work shows this. Archives
August 2017
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