Archive for March, 2007

Cone 6 Glaze Test Tiles and Keywords/Search Engine Optimization

Published
by
Cynthia
on March 29, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 14 Comments

Cone 6 Glaze Test Tiles

Glaze Tests March 21, 2007

Glaze test tiles
The “keepers” in my opinion

Gee, is it really Thursday already, because it feels like the week is just flying by! Here in Colorado, we have been enjoying warm spring days for the past few weeks; that was until Mother Nature decided to remind us that she’s still in charge. We woke up to about 4 inches of snow in the Denver metro area this morning. I really can’t complain because come summer we’ll be crying for moisture.

My goal for my blog is to post every 2-3 days, and this week I let 4 days stretch between posts…. Not my intention, but what can you do? I could backdate my post to make it look like I posted yesterday, but I won’t. It’s not like I don’t have anything to say either. I have a blog post saved as a draft with future blog topics all ready to go.

Anyway, let me get back on topic. I wanted to share my glaze test tiles that came out of the kiln last week. I had tested a high calcium semi-matte base glaze recipe from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes, page 89 in the book, and then added variations in color: 3 to be exact. I also re-tested the cone 6 Chinese Blue Green recipe, which compared side by side with my tests from college, turned out perfectly! My ceramic’s mentor, Mary Cay, is coaching me through my glaze testing and is having me use Robin Hopper’s method using the “color progressions pie” from page 187 in The Ceramic Spectrum.

Do you remember back in high school or college math, thinking to yourself, “when am I ever going to need to use this information again?” Well, I had to dust off my algebraic capabilities from my brain files in order to calculate the glaze recipe once my tiles came out. I was scratching my head, wondering how am I going to get the colorant amounts for test tile #5 from the pie?? Algebra to the rescue. The algebraic formula is explained on page 190 of The Ceramic Spectrum.

In other news, I subscribe to an online newsletter called Practical E-Commerce and there was a really good article today on keywords and how to choose wisely to optimize your website’s ranking with search engines. I’m paying attention, because when I google my name, my blog comes up first and foremost, but not my website. I have two domains pointing to my website, http://cynthiaguajardo.com and http://coloradoartstudio.com, and my website doesn’t come up on the first few pages of my google search. Now my blog comes up #1 and my blog does have a link to my website, but how many people are going to poke around to find it?

If I search for pottery, ceramic pottery, ceramic vase, handmade pottery or other vague search terms, my site is no where to be seen. So, the question is how can I choose and narrow down the focus of my keywords to help people find my website? Here’s a link to a free keyword analyzer that will help to narrow down that search. Obviously, hitting the streets, networking, word of mouth will help people find my work, but my quest is to help my website stand out anonymously on the Internet. The article advises that webmasters use narrowed down specific search terms. In other words, pretend to be one of your customers. Think like a consumer of your product. What would you search for?

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Studio Progress

Published
by
Cynthia
on March 27, 2007
in Uncategorized
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Studio

My creative corner studio in the garage

It has been a productive past few days around the Guajardo household! Inspired by Pinky’s home renovations, we have begun painting the trim in our home, clearing out the garage and general sprucing up of the homestead. After remodeling our house 1 1/2 years ago, we basically moved in and have been living with all sorts of unfinished projects. We sort of turned a blind eye to it all, until I said, “enough is enough!” We have to finish it, I feel like there’s something that still needs to be done every single day of the year and after the feng shui seminar, it’s just plain bad energy.

In addition to painting the trim we have begun the process of cleaning the garage in anticipation of my studio conversion. I’m working in there, but it’s not pretty. Functional, but not pretty. I can already picture the crisp white walls and light streaming in from the new windows…bits of inspriation and eye candy hung on the walls. Back to reality, we posted several items to our local Craigslist for free and for sale. We arranged the items for easy extraction from the garage that will find their way back into the house including an upright piano and a set of bedroom furniture. Stacks of boxes of slides are sitting in our dining room waiting to be scanned and archived.

And, I am letting a large portion of my stash of artist’s canvas go via Ebay. If you looking for cheap canvas - give my auctions a looksie. I have 6 packs of 6″ x 6″ x 3/4″ stretched (staple free edges) canvas starting at $7.99 per box and 6 packs of 16″ x 20″ x 3/4″ stretched (staple free edges) canvas starting at $15.99 per box. These are all still sealed in their boxes by the factory. I purchased these new from Art Supply Warehouse last year for $12.99 and $29.99 respectively.

In the meantime, I started coloring some of the porcelain clay with mason stains to begin some experimentation with millefiori for my ceramic pendants that I’ll be selling on Etsy.

Several people commented that they had no idea what 500 pounds of clay looked like. I purchase this pre-made from Mile Hi Ceramics by 50 pound boxes. It comes with 2 - 25 pound bags per box. Here’s what one bag looks like. So, I had 10 - 50 pound boxes in the back of my Pathfinder (one of the few times I need an SUV - that and camping).
25 Pounds of Clay

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New work fresh out of the kiln!

Published
by
Cynthia
on March 24, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 9 Comments

Cynthia M. Guajardo Cynthia M. Guajardo
Cynthia M. Guajardo Cynthia M. Guajardo

Cynthia M. Guajardo

Here’s new work freshly glaze fired at the Art Student’s League of Denver that I picked up this past Wednesday. These pieces were fired to cone 6 in oxidation, ie., approximately 2230 degrees F in an electric kiln. I love the celadon glaze that we have mixed up at the ASL - it’s a beautiful cool, translucent light aqua color; however, on this stoneware clay body I give it a B-. Mile Hi Ceramics in Denver has, until recently, been out of the porcelain clay that I normally use so I had opted to try a stoneware called 4010 which fires to a buff color.

In my opinion, it’s not the best background color for the celadon glaze. The pure white of porcelain would be a better backdrop much like a painter often chooses to use the white of the canvas to highlight the actual color of the paint. Lesson learned, and I’ll be adding this to my notebook for future reference in case I’m ever tempted to try this again. It really depends on what the artist is striving for though, so it’s all good. I learned that my personal preference would be to use an opaque glaze on the 4010. Good news: I just picked up 500 pounds of Aspen porcelain from Mile Hi Ceramics last Wednesday!

In other news, the online marketing class that I took from Art Biz Coach ended yesterday. I learned so much and highly recommend taking one of Alyson’s classes. She uses Yahoo groups which I found to be a little cumbersome, but I learned so, so much. Could I have learned this info from a book? Yes - probably, but I would not have been disciplined enough to follow through. The book would probably still be sitting on my night stand collecting dust. Every day we received an action in our inbox, so she makes it really easy to break down the task of marketing one’s art business duties. I have a plan now and feel really confident.

If you want to get a feel about what Alyson has to offer, listen to this 30 minute interview by Craftcast owner Alison Lee. I found it really inspiring. I also subscribed to Alison Lee’s newsletter while I was visiting her amazing site. In case you missed it, “How to Energize Your Studio with Feng Shui” is currently available as an mp3 to download for free from Alyson’s site. Listen to it on your computer, or do what I did - I put it on my iPod and listened to it while I slogged around the park yesterday. It made the time pass quickly.

Meanwhile, the glaze tests I recently conducted turned out great! I’ll be sharing those within the next few days. I will also be doing my first bisque firing in my old (but new to me) Paragon A88-b kiln this next week. It fired up to cone 6 in my testing so I’m ready to rock and roll!

I’ll leave you with this quote my friend Nikki sent my way:

It’s really scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them. Which is why it’s such a great opportunity.
-Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.

You see Nikki and I have to remind each other every so often why we quit our jobs to become creative entrepreneurs.

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New Trays WIPs

Published
by
Cynthia
on March 23, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 10 Comments

Floral Tray 15″ x 10.5″ unfired. Does the design look familiar to you?

Gingko Tray 11.5″ x 11.5″, unfired

This will be a super quick post this morning. I just wanted to share a couple of handbuilt trays that I’m working on this week. I rolled a number of clay slabs out on Wednesday at the Art Student’s League and brought them home to work on. Within 4 hours times, they had dried too much to make what I had originally intended, so I had to improvise and make fairly flat objects with my slabs. I settled on 2 trays, a shallow bowl, a set of chop stick rests and 5 spoon rests. I applied a aqua blue slip to the trays and will be sgraffito-ing (is that even a word?) the trays this morning.

I also had a successful glaze firing at the league and as soon as I photograph the work will share those photos with you too - maybe this weekend.

I had intended to get a lot done yesterday, but instead got sucked into cyber-space. So, after writing this post, I will not be signing back on today. I say this for myself, because I need more computer discipline!

Paula was kind enough to feature me on her blog yesterday, so if you want to know even more about me, head on over to Manning-Lewis Studios. While you’re there, check out Paula’s beautiful spiral abstract paintings, thanks Paula!

PS It’s officially spring - mother nature must know because all of a sudden the forsythias and magnolias are in full bloom!

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What have I been up to the past few days?

Published
by
Cynthia
on March 20, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 10 Comments

Denver Etsy
A few weeks ago, Kismet Designs, a fellow Etsy seller, contacted me and about 8-10 other local Denver artists about possibly starting a Denver Etsy Street Team. 4 of us met in person this past Sunday, including Kismet, Kastroll Kreations, Carla Sonheim and myself.

Not only was it nice to meet some fellow creatives, but it was also wonderful to brainstorm about doing some group marketing promotions together in the coming months. We have started a group blog, which will mainly serve to announce events, sales and other news and we hope to possibly test having a group booth at a few arts and crafts events locally.

In other news, I tested my new mini Aim Kiln yesterday and it’s working perfectly. I didn’t get any porcelain pendants started this weekend, but will do so in the next few days. I also tested my larger Paragon Kiln yesterday. I purchased it used last year and didn’t even know if it even worked. Good news! It got up to temperature for a bisque fire, and today, I’m going to test it at cone 6 (roughly 2230 degrees F). I thought maybe I would need to replace the elements, but it looks like I may squeak by for a little more time. I also found a pyrometer, hydrometer, tons of stilts, shelves and other kiln related bonuses. I guess I had never investigated my purchase fully when I brought it home.

I did make 8 wheel thrown spoon rests yesterday. They’re setting up right now and will be ready to trim today or tomorrow. I was practicing “throwing off the hump” to make these. No, that’s not some perverse clay technique, “throwing off the hump” is basically a technique where multiple forms are thrown from 1 large centered piece of clay on the wheel head. It saves time since you only need to center 1 hunk of clay.

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