Busy Week and Bamboo Fun Update
Hello friends! Have I really let a week pass between posts? This has been one crazy busy month so far (started around Thanksgiving) and I feel like I’m just now catching my breath – though not for long. What have I been up to?
- Daughter’s 11th Birthday & Party
- Middle School applications were due Dec. 12 for the following school year – seriously way too much for a 5th grader and her parents to deal with at this age. Essays, recommendations, test scores, application, visitations, interviews etc. I suppose if my daughter wanted to go to her neighborhood school it wouldn’t have mattered, but she applied to several public magnet schools: Denver School of the Arts (she has an audition and interview scheduled for January), Denver Center for International Studies, and Morey (a gifted magnet program). We’re lucky to have school choice, but it’s a crazy amount of work!
- Volunteer duties at her school
- School Silent and Live Auction – despite the bad economy, we raised about $30,000 which is about $15,000 less than last year. I’ve helped out the past 3 years – turns out I’m a pretty good fund raiser…go figure since I’m a terrible salesperson (at least with my own work).
- Class parties and projects – all fun, but time consuming.
- Holiday shopping & shipping frenzy
- After school clay class – ended on Dec. 16, I’ve got about 30 days till the next one starts up – whew…
- Subbing – seems like teachers like having days off in December.
- Cleaning – my in-laws arrive tomorrow for the holidays and on Monday our house is being appraised. We decided to go ahead and refinance since the rates are below 5% right now and it will save us a couple hundred dollars a month. There’s a chance my husband will be laid off in January – the company he works for announced a 10% workforce reduction and his department will be affected, so paring down our bills is paramount. I’m not terribly worried about it, if it happens then he will temporarily go into business with me while he looks for another job. I wonder if he’s crafty??
Actually, he doesn’t need to be crafty – I would love his organizational skills coupled with his financial wizardry. He’s a business analyst, finance guy and his skills would come in handy since I’m the exact opposite!
Anyway, it’s all good, and now that Winter Break started yesterday I feel like I’ve stopped hyperventilating. Now I can slow down and enjoy the holidays leisurely and in full the way it should be experienced. So enough about my laundry list of to-dos…let’s talk ceramic decals & Bamboo Fun!
Celadon and white glazed porcelain bowl
In anticipation of creating some laser ceramic decals, I have a few pieces of pottery that I specifically left undecorated in order to experiment with the process. These came out of the kiln on Monday, but since I didn’t have time to install my Wacom tablet and didn’t receive the laser decal paper until Thursday, they’ve been sitting on my dining room table ready and waiting for their finishing touches. They sort of look like they got dressed, but forgot to brush their hair and accessorize their outfits
Caramel glazed porcelain mug
This is a bit of an aside, but this caramel colored glaze is suppose to be an off white matte glaze that breaks caramel. My new digital Skutt if firing hot (going to cone 7 – even though it’s programed to cone 6) though and this glaze has been turning a translucent caramel color which I actually really like a lot. I thought it would be a good neutral base for laser decals. I dipped the rim in a glossy white which is why it looks mottled – though you might not see it unless you click on the image to enlarge it. This is a base glaze from MC6G – and it’s still stable and doesn’t run at cone 7. From what I’ve read, matte glazes that turn glossy might actually mean that at the lower temperature it’s really underfired. I know the celadon glaze that I use does that when under fired.
Celadon glazed white stoneware box
This is a little 3″ x 4″ covered box that I made for my neice for her January 1st birthday celebration. She visits the Maryland shore with her mom and dad nearly every summer and loves the beach. Instead of hand painting this one with underglaze like these, I decided to apply decals for decoration instead. I’m hoping the sepia won’t clash with the celadon color…we’ll see.
I hope to print the decals today and then fire the pieces tomorrow – and hope to share the results good, bad and ugly on Monday. It’s a good time to fire the kiln too – we’re in for another cold snap this weekend…20′s through Wednesday. Brrrr!
Meanwhile, my husband and I might go see Cheech and Chong at the Paramount theater tomorrow night. 
I was reading Friday’s Denver Post yesterday and saw that the duo has reunited for a tour and their show has received great reviews. My hubby and I desperately need to go on a date sans child and I really feel like laughing till my face hurts.
Have a great weekend,
~Cynthia
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet – Another Present
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet
After finally installing my new HP P1006 Laser Printer the other day (love it!), I am now waiting patiently for the laser decal paper that I ordered to arrive in the mail since I could not find it locally here in Denver. In the meantime, I’ve been sketching a bit and after scanning the drawings into my computer, I remembered looking at one of those computer graphics pens a few months ago. It’s pretty cool, you sketch on the little pad and it transfers to your computer digitally.
I decided that I absolutely needed one of these little toys! After chatting about it with some fellow Etsy Mud Team members yesterday, I was ready to run out the door and pick one up. Though every fiber in my body said, “Run like the wind girl – go get yourself a new toy NOW!”, I exercised a bit of self restraint. But, not much – I’m picking it up today instead.
I decided to go with the small Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet, instead one of the larger versions after reading reviews online. I may decide to go with a larger version in the future, but I think for my needs it will be just fine. The Bamboo Fun comes bundled with Adobe Elements and Corel Painter Essentials – I don’t need the former since I have full blown Photoshop loaded on my computer, but I might make use of the latter.
My mom is being very generous this year since she’s footing the bill – Thanks again Mom!! I think I owe her something special now, don’t you? In some ways shopping for myself for Christmas takes away the surprise element, but since I don’t really need anything and she insists on buying something for each of her kids, my Mom always asks me what I really want that I might not buy for myself.
Meanwhile, I’m going roller skating today. My daughter turned 11 on Thursday and she really wanted to have her birthday party at a roller skating rink. She invited all the girls in her class + a few others – this ought to be fun. I haven’t been roller skating since I was a teen. I have memories of skating around the rink in continuous circles to Donna Summers and when the occasional slow romantic song was played, sitting off on the sidelines casting side ways glances at cute boys hoping that one of them would ask me to skate with them. While my husband may or may not ask me to skate with him this afternoon, I expect to come home with a bruise or two. (lol)
Have a great weekend,
~Cynthia
HP Laser Printer – Merry Christmas to Me
HP P1006 Black and White Laser Printer
I was running errands the other day – you know the kind where 1 store doesn’t fit all? I needed mailing labels from the paper store, clay from Mile Hi Ceramics, ribbon from the craft store, snacks for my clay class etc. etc. For some reason, I popped into the Office Max near a grocery store and decided to check out the laser printers again. I’ve been re-reading Image Transfer on Clay by Paul Wandless and also checked Ceramics and Print, by Paul Scott from the public library again (I should really just buy the book) because I’ve been thinking about making decals again.
I can’t seem to get my act together to screen decals, and the laser decals seem a bit easier to start. There is a high concentration of iron oxide in some types of laser toner ink cartridges, which when fired onto glazed work results in a soft sepia toned image. I could use my own art work, copy right free images, photographs, etc. to add another dimension onto my ceramic work.
Backing up to my visit to Office Max…when I ran into the store for some kind of misc. office supply, I slowed down near the printers and was impressed with how reasonably priced the simple black and white laser printers are right now. Of course, when I ask the sales rep for information about wanting to see the specs on the ink cartridge for this printer, he was probably thinking, Oy Vey, I’ve got a looney on my hands. I had to back up and explain what I was using the printer for and then, he was a little more agreeable to helping me find the information I needed.
I remembered reading a thread on the Clay Art discussion board about ink content and that any ink that contains at least 30% iron oxide works well for laser decals and HP models seem to have anywhere from 35-45% iron oxide. When I finally found the MSDS for the ink on the HP site, it lists “ferrite” as one of the ink’s ingredients – but that’s so vague and was listed as part of a “proprietary recipe”. I know that ferrite refers to iron, so I needed to investigate a little more.
So, the sales rep hooked me up with one of their fancy computers (Ever used a touch screen monitor before? That’s a topic for another day, but very weird – I missed the keyboard) to search for the info I needed on a clayart thread on ink. Instead of finding the thread for which I was looking, I landed on Justin Rothshank’s site, (a potter whose work I now own thanks to the Obamaware fundraiser) and he specifically lists the printer model I was scrutinizing on his “decal resources page”. At $99.99 + tax, it seems like a reasonable price for an item that typically has a fairly short life span in my experience. Bam – instant sale and since my mom has been asking me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I called her up to thank her for her generous present after leaving the store with printer in hand.
I already have decal paper, but just realized that I purchased traditional decal paper which requires a cover coat – I think I’ll buy some laser decal paper and am going to check my local fine art supplier, Meiningers – if they don’t have it, I’ll buy some online from DecalPaper.com.
Meanwhile, my anti virus software keeps telling me that my website and blog is being blocked for suspicious pdf download activity. I do my best to stay up to date on virus and software definitions and also keep WordPress up to date, so if you are receiving any messages like this, please let me know. I’m going to investigate later today to make sure that it’s just Norton Antivirus being uber protective.
Have a great day,
~Cynthia
Kid’s Sculptures and New Large Mug Design
Hello everyone! I apologize for being a neglectful blogger the past week thanks in part to how busy I find myself this time of the year. Also, I came down with a bug this past week and barely had energy to do the those tasks that I absolutely have to do every day. I’m on the mend now and hope to resume life as normal.
My after school kid’s clay club made these adorable little sculptures two weeks ago and when I pulled them out of the kiln, I was so darn excited to see how they turned out. The project was inspired by a fellow Colorado Potter’s Guild member who makes fun little ceramic and metal insects. I asked Penny Woolsey if she would mind if I did a similar project with my kid’s clay class and she gave her blessing.
The sculptures are hand built and then the screws are added before bisque firing. I was a little nervous about the metal melting in the kiln, and even called the screw manufacturer to verify the metal that was used to to make this particular screw to assure myself that I wouldn’t have a kiln disaster on my hands. Here’s a list of different melting temperatures of various common metals – so once I established that my screws weren’t lead, brass, aluminum or other low melting point metals, I fired the sculptures. I was so excited to open the kiln and find these gems and hated to give them back to the kids.
Porcelain unfired mug
In the meantime, I managed to get in a few studio hours last week and made a new type of mug (new for me). The body is thrown and the handles and base are hand built. I’m going to fire a bisque kiln this afternoon and am looking forward to seeing how this one will fare. It’s a large mug – 16 oz. capacity or so.
Porcelain doesn’t hold up well to hand building in general which is why I have been using a white stoneware clay for my hand built mugs. I like the whiteness of the porcelain clay better than the stoneware clay, so this might be a good alternative.
Have a good week,
~Cynthia
