Rabbit Box and Anniversaries
Rabbit Box
I really like this covered stoneware box, unfortunately, this is the only photo I have of it and I didn’t get photographs of the other side. I like to put different images on each side to keep it fresh. Why rabbits? It reminds me – especially this vintage image – of one of my favorite childhood stories…The Velveteen Rabbit published in 1922 by Margery Williams.
Meanwhile, my husband and I are headed downtown tonight to celebrate our 20th anniversary (has it really been 20 years already?) – which isn’t official until May 19th. Since the 19th is a school night, we’re celebrating early by spending the night at the Hyatt in downtown Denver. We kicked around several ideas – the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park where Stephen King stayed and was inspired to write The Shining, The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs (another historic hotel) and even some other historic hotels in downtown Denver. The Hyatt won out because I love their roof top bar that has a view of the mountains and the city – but also because the designers of the hotel decorated each room with individual artist’s work vs. cheesy giclee prints typical of most hotels.
Don’t worry, my sister in law is staying with my daughter and the dogs and they have quite an evening planned from what I understand.
Have a great weekend,
Cynthia
Custom and Commercial Ceramic Decals
J.T. McMaster Ceramic Decal Specialists Website
Several months ago, when I first started posting about my desire to add decals to my work, I was contacted by Lauren Skoll, director of J.T. McMaster – a commercial and custom decal provider out of South Africa. She mentioned that she would be in the Denver area around the same time that the Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show was taking place and I told her I’d love to meet her and see her company’s decals in person.
You know me though (or maybe you don’t) – but I am a glutton for learning…err punishment sometimes. I want to understand the process myself and normally will set out to learn how to do something even though it might be easier and more cost effective to farm some tasks out. Even so, when the Potters Guild event approached, I decided to meet Lauren with an open mind.
Decal samples – hearts, geckos and South African cloth
Lauren came to the sale with a lot of sample decals and left many behind for the guild members to use. I took the decals in the photo above home with the idea that I will play around with these a bit – push the medium to figure out limitations and potential. Unlike the laser toner decals, these are screen printed with ceramic over-glaze colors and fire at a much lower temperature – there are firing instructions on the company’s website. Whereas laser toner decals fire to a sepia tone and the firing temperature depends more on the glaze temperature to which the decal is adhered, these full color decals fire to roughly cone 016.
The other thing that I like about using these is that artists can upload original artwork and specify colors for McMasters to make custom decals – so there’s a lot of potential. Once the proofs are finished, it would be easy to reorder. This would be infinitely easier than learning to screen print oneself and doing all the trial & error proofs before getting good results. I’ve taken a close look at the decals and they are very crisp and clear and am assuming that they would remain so after firing. I suppose one hesitation for me is that I don’t want my work to look commercial – but after checking out the company’s website, there are individual artists who are using these decals very effectively.
I also asked Lauren about prices and sizes, however because each job is custom, cost varies. She did tell me that the currency exchange is very favorable towards the dollar right now and shipping is nominal. The company tries to get as many decals as possible on an A4 size sheet of paper which is slightly narrower and longer than a letter sized sheet of paper (8.5″ x 11″).
Here in the US, Easy Ceramic Decals also makes custom decals – as well as a few other businesses. Just google ceramic decals and voilà! I’ve never used color decals before, so who knows where this venture could lead?
Meanwhile, I’ll play with these and I still have the screen printing supplies to try making my own color decals this summer.
Happy Wednesday,
~Cynthia
P.S. We’re in the market for a pocket sized digital camera for our trip overseas because my camera is way too clunky and heavy. I am seriously considering the Sony Cybershot, the Nikon Coolpix or the Canon Elph. Any thoughts? I had a bit of sticker shock, but in a good way after looking at some in the store. More MP and better digital zoom for a fraction of the cost compared to my 5 year old Olympus. Amazing.
Glazed and Decaled Wall Tile Boxes
Wall boxes pre-decoration – made using stiff slab construction
The week before the Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show, the idea to make some wall box tiles came into my conciousness and couldn’t be ignored. I made a lot of these while I was in school, but hadn’t really thought about them for awhile. I really want to add more depth and layers to my work and I confess am struggling with that just a bit. I think there is potential with these wall boxes that act more like canvases in 2-D work.
Drawing directly on wall box with dull pencil in preparation for mishima
I need to allow more thought for how to finish these in the future. I was pretty rushed before the show and went with familiar easy images I already have in my arsenal.
Colored slip was applied to drawn areas and cleaned up with rib
Mishima adds almost a sub layer since the colored slip becomes part of the actual “canvas” if you will. I have a few colored slips pre-made that I made using scrap clay and mason stains.
Colored slip was stenciled onto the wall box
Using paper stencils, I applied more colored slip on top of the clay box while it was leather hard. This slip is a pale yellow and is the only one I have where I’ve used oxides instead of mason stains – I think I used rutile and copper carb for this one.
Wall box glazed and decaled
After bisque firing the wall box, I brushed on glazes and fired to cone 6. This tile is 6″ square x 1.5″ deep and I wasn’t sure if warping would be an issue or not. There was some slight bowing, but not terribly. After the glaze fire, I added laser toner decals to the paper stenciled flowers and added an image of a vintage bird and fired again to cone 04. The soft yellow stenciled flowers are not very visible in this photo – that’s what I get for rushing.
Meanwhile, I haven’t had much time to get into the studio the past week, besides firing my student’s work. I will get in a few hours tomorrow and Wednesday – but today am chaperoning a field trip to the Platte River. It’s a nature/ecology based field trip put on by SPREE which is a group that educates the public – specifically school children all about the Platte River, which is a major fresh water source for Denver and other parts of Colorado, so that it stays protected. In the past, the Platte River was pretty polluted and unappreciated.
With that, have a good week,
~Cynthia
No Time to Photograph Last Decal Firing
Pots waiting patiently for their turn for decal attention
Happy Monday morning everyone! After a making/glazing/decal marathon of the past several weeks, I can now breathe a huge contented sigh enjoyed by stress free people all over the world. Not to worry, I’m sure I’ll repeat my manic potter behavior for the show next fall. Try as I might, I can’t seem to break the cycle of cramming for a show at the last minute. The Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show opened Thursday evening and on Wednesday afternoon, I was still applying decals to my work. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek is all my brain was yelling all day long.
Applying decals to tiny tiny covered box
After my small decal firings, this was by far the most ambitious one yet. I didn’t quite fill my Skutt 1027, but almost did. After taking a deep breath, I buckled down – stopped answering emails, phone calls etc. in preparation for assembly line style decal printing and application.
Decaled work ready to be fired
For some of my work, I had already decided on a design – but for at least half, I sort of made it up as I went along. I looked at the pot trying to decide how to “dress” it, if you will. While decals are without a doubt less labor intensive than hand painting – which was one of my hopes for the process – it is not without a time commitment. It took quite a long time to format the decals on a letter sized sheet of decal paper in order to get the most decals out of one sheet. I used a variety of sources for decals, including royalty free clip art, tweaked digital photographs (my own and royalty free ones – read the fine print though for release info, digital scans of actual leaves and sketches of my art work (thanks Wacom tablet).
First 2 shelves of decal firing look good
By 8pm, I was ready to fire the kiln and instead of doing a slow fire because quite frankly I didn’t have the luxury of time, I programmed a fast fire to cone 04, gave a nod to the kiln goddess, crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d have some work to bring to the Guild’s sale. I was up till almost 1am making sure that the kiln would shut off – I had no idea how long a fast cone 04 firing would take (fyi – about 5 hours).
Next shelf looks good too
By 6am Thursday morning, the kiln was still too hot to touch – but being the gambler that I am, I pulled all the peeps, and cracked the lid ever so slightly. By 8am, the kiln had dropped another 300 degrees – so I propped the lid open wider – and by 10 am I was able to unload. Mind you, I think the kiln goddess was listening to my pleas and I got lucky. In my opinion, pots are best when they’re still warm to the touch, much like melt in your mouth chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Blue butterfly box
I can’t tell you how darn happy I was as I unloaded the kiln! Squeals of joy, jumping up and down – woohoos escaping my lips. My joy was short lived, however when I realized that I only had an hour+ to inventory, price & shower before I had to deliver the work to the show venue at noon on Thursday. I have a few candid shots of my work sitting on my work table and that’s it.
Work waiting to be priced
Luckily, I volunteered to be on the photograph team for the Spring Show – so I did pull out 6 of my better pieces to be photographed. I won’t get those back for several weeks though because another member was taking the photographs and needs to upload and edit all of them. I tried taking some over his shoulder with my camera, but I forgot my tripod at home, so they didn’t turn out so well. I’ll share later in the week.
So, how did our show turn out? I didn’t hear how the group as a whole did, but I personally did very well. I brought 80 pieces and sold 60 – all of my covered boxes sold, along with some new wall tiles, all my mugs, butter dishes, and almost every single one of my new decal pieces. I even sold most of my older work that I had priced attractively and wanted to get rid of because I’m tired of looking at it. I have 6 sets of buttons, some small oblong trays, a couple of misc. pieces, and 3 weed pots left over.
In celebration, I hung out with my family this weekend and didn’t do a whole lot of anything besides going to my daughter’s soccer games, laundry and working in the yard a bit. Today, I head back to the studio – I’m pretty jazzed about my new wall tile boxes.
Have a good week,
~Cynthia
