Handmade Pottery + Ceramic Jewelry

Butterfly Box

My in-laws have been in town since last weekend and despite the distraction, I’ve managed to make and finish work for the Colorado Potters Guild Show opening at the end of the month.  These boxes are still green – or unfired – and will be bisque fired some time early next week.  I don’t have as much work as I would have liked, but I am happy with what I have made.  The sides of these boxes have intentionally been left with no decoration because I’ll be adding laser toner decals after I have glazed the boxes.  BTW, the butterfly sprig and knob (above) and the heart knob (below) were made using a chocolate mold.

Heart Box

I have a few larger boxes, this one included.  “Large” is a fairly subjective statement, however, since this only measures 4″ across and tall.  I think this one could go many different directions in regards to decal motifs – from the sanguine to more contemporary (I immediately saw tattoo images with the hearts).

Lavender Butterfly Box

For this box, I used underglaze for color and will add decals over the butterflies [one on each side] as an experiment.  You may remember my failed attempt several weeks ago when I over fired a bisque load.

Tall Flower Box

Finally, this tall box isn’t terribly practical, but it would be sweet to store wedding rings next to a night stand or sink or as a gift box to present someone with a special gift.  The flowers were made from lino-cuts – which I desperately need to expand for more variety!  I still have other boxes in varying degrees of being finished, but haven’t photographed them yet.  My hand building phase is coming to an end right now, which means it’s time to throw a few things in preparation for the show.  I’ve learned that throwing is a much faster process than hand building – but enjoy doing both.

Meanwhile, I reverted to my old Word Press theme while I figure out how to use The Gimp instead of Photoshop to manipulate the images in my file folders.  While it’s fairly similar to Photoshop and many of the tools are recognizable, it hasn’t been an intuitive switch for me so I picked up a book called Beginning Gimp by Akkanna Peck yesterday.  I was getting frustrating trying to use my old way of working and am determined to make Ubuntu and free open source software work for me.   In fact, yesterday I was in Best Buy and I took another look at new cell phones, lap tops – including the MacBook Pro, and really restrained myself from making any hasty buying decisions.

That’s it for today,

~Cynthia