My daughter still has 1.5 days of school left. When we lived on the East Coast, she attended school until mid to late June. Here in Colorado the kids get out around Memorial day. I swear last year, her final day of school was right before the long weekend. What in the world can they accomplish in the next 1.5 days?? We agreed last night that it was a good experience and parallels what it would be like to be a lame duck president, or maybe someone who has given notice at work and is just filling out their contractual obligation. Otherwise, why bother??

Anyway, the small platter above is a new piece that recently came out of the kiln. I’ve mentioned this several times before, but I learn something about working with clay every single day. Working on this piece was no different. I had formed the piece after rolling out porcelain clay using a slab roller. I slumped it in one of my new plywood forms and after it had set up, I painted colored slip onto it. Don’t do the latter unless your piece is still in your slump mold!!

I did and was promptly rewarded with my piece reverting to a flat piece of clay. Somehow I rescued it, but now it has a fairly small lip in contrast to the original generous one. The good news is that since I considered this piece kaput, I felt free to try a new color combo and technique on my platter. Why does that happen? An item becomes less precious, and I can be a little less rigid design wise. Why don’t I treat all my pieces like this? Some really cool stuff happens when I do. This is also one of those pieces that I didn’t expect would survive the glaze fire; yet it did when they cake platter didn’t.

I need to work on my photography. I couldn’t photograph this head on without getting the glare of the sunlight on my piece. Add another thing to my to-do list! I read somewhere, that artists should never photograph their own work, to leave that to the professionals. Well, it’s quite a dilemma if one has to choose between paying a pro to photograph work vs. buying new material to make more work!

I sold quite a few things this weekend from my Etsy Shop, which pleased me to no end. I’m starting to think that this can really work for me. If you recall, I had a special going over Memorial day weekend, Free shipping for all jewelry. Surprisingly, I sold 1 set of jewelry (earrings and necklace) but the rest was functional pottery. That’s exciting to me.

I hope to get around to everyone’s blogs today or tomorrow. I’m still feeling the need to throw a few more things for the summer art market. This is pretty much the last day for me to make anything. The rest of my efforts will be concentrated on finishing.

Have a good day everyone,