Seven red dots

The show finishes this weekend and nothing will be coming back to me 'cos - THEY ALL SOLD! Yay. I hope they are all happy in their new homes.

Cover girl

Good news - they put my jug and bowl set on the Mother's Day advertising. Bad news - due to a very bad run of cracking bases, I only have four that survived. I'm going to try making more tomorrow but I'll be pushing it for Mother's day.

Exhibition update

I am now three weeks into the exhibition at JamFactory and am excited to say six out of my seven pieces have sold. They all sold within the first couple of days. Some to people I know others to complete strangers. I must say I feel a bit weird having people buy something I have made. A couple of people had already decided how they were going to use the piece they bought. One was going to make it her morning teacup. I am really pleased about this as I see these as functional works that should enhance everyday life. I will take some photos of the exhibition before it finishes.

Time management

I seem to be constantly time poor these days. When I went from part-time work/part-time ceramics to full-time ceramics I thought I would gain so much time. In reality, those extra days are spent working for the studio and I still only have 2.5 days to develop my own work. On top of that I have been asked to production throw some little tea bowls for the studio range. Each little bowl currently takes me about 8 minutes to make. I then need about the same amount of time to trim. At $1.50 per bowl I have worked out I earn about $5 an hour. The aim of course is to take less time per bowl which will in turn make me a better potter (and more money). The main production potter at JamFactory takes 1 minute to make the same bowl. I don't think I'll ever be that fast but I'll give it a try.

I'm back

Ok, so I'm a rubbish blogger. Life just overwhelmed me for a bit there and something had to go. Work has been full on, we have just decided to build a house and need to sign up before the gov't rebate ends in June, my Dad is less than well so blogging was not the 1st priority. I still have the same pressures but I've got my head around it now so hopefully I'll be more effective. We'll see...

1st exhibition

I am hurriedly trying to finish and develop new work for this exhibiton. Things are coming along nicely but its a bit tight. I'm firing a kiln tomorrow which will hopefully produce some work on which I will apply my "Deconstructed Decals". I'm still playing around with the inlay decoration I tried out on Sunday and hope to have a few of those ready in time too. It means squeezing in about three firings next week but I think it will be worth it.

Breakthrough

For ever I have been a doodler - when I'm on the phone, in a meeting or on my own at lunch I sit and scribble away. I quite like my little pictures and have been trying to find a way of working them into my ceramics. I've tried painting with a brush but I can't get the same feeling or quality of line. This morning I decided to have a play with a bit of inlay. I scratched some lines straight into the unfired pot, filled them with coloured slip and scratched it back to reveal - yay - my little pictures. I'm a bit excited about this. It feels the most me out of anything I have done.