Unexpected Surprise - Sunshine Award

Julianna, author of Julsbeads, has gifted us with the blog Sunshine Award. We are simply amazed and honored. Julianna made our day! It makes all the hard work worthwhile.

We are speechless, or should I say writers block, because we have no words to describe our joy. According to Julianna's blog, we are to pass this along to six deserving artisans in recognition of your expertise and dedication to making the world a better place one art piece at a time.

The six artisans we choose are:

Lori Anderson of Pretty Things

Shannon Levart of Missficklemedia.com

Cat Kerr of In the Light of the Moon

Sharon P of Sharon's Jewelry Garden

Marie Cramp of Skye Jewels

Barbara Lewis of Painting with Fire

Feeling all bright and shiny now! Please pass along this feeling to others!

- Put the Sunshine image on your blog or within your post.
- Pass the award onto six bloggers
- Link the nominees within your post.
- Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
- Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Metals Studio - Baby Gift

This weekend feels like it was a whirlwind of activity. On Saturday I worked in the ceramics studio for about three hours. I was able to get three bowls trimmed, pulled two handles for cups, and threw five shaped cylinders.

The afternoon was devoted to running around town. Mom and I went to every hardware store looking for chain to use for the gift I was making for a friends baby. The last store, of course, had the size chain I wanted to use. If I ever do this project again I will plan way in advance and buy chain from Rio or someplace else.

On Sunday mom and I were in the metals studio for a little over four hours. I was able to cut out a large bowl and four smaller sized bowls. Mom then filed and sanded the edges and I then heated up the copper so she could form the bowls in the stump.

I then worked on finishing enameling the new "Fairy Jewels" bowl, abstract leaf shapes for earrings and a bracelet and two pendants. I also was able to enamel the inside of one bowl "Flutter Bye" before both mom and I were done.

Fairy Jewels bowl - mom will make Boro pendants to attach to the bowl (where the holes are)

Bracelet parts - colors were transparent purple/pink/yellow

Earrings - colors were transparent purple/pink/yellow

These two pendants I cut out while I was at Penland and I just finally got around to enameling them

When we got back to mom's house we put together my friend, Julie's, baby gift; an elephant wind chime. The colors are based off of what they painted the baby room and the elephant is from another friend's quilt, Elephunk, she made for the baby.

The elephants are dark blue with light blue speckles and miscellaneous browns with blue dots
Lily sniffing the wind chime

Mom and I also made Julie a necklace (she deserves something for carrying a baby around for nine months and then giving birth). The chain is Viking Knit and the pendant is Julie's initials from her photography blog.

The colors are blue and pink

Barbara Lewis - Bead Giveaway

Barbara Lewis, Painting with Fire, is having a giveaway on her new blog. Please go to Barbara's new blog to find out what you have to do to win!

Her stuff is amazing and she has been very patient with me in answering questions about torch firing beads.

Test Over and Ceramic Pieces Fired

Well, the test is finally over with and of course we probably won't find out our grades for another three weeks. The professor and the grad students have a bunch of papers to read and that takes time since all the questions and answers are essays. I am just glad it is over with, until the next test at the end of March, but that is for another day.

The high fire was done yesterday and I was able to see what happened to my stuff. I didn't even take a photograph of the test porcelain piece I did because IT WAS FUGLY! The outside was all brown and we think I didn't put a thick enough coat of glaze on it.

The water lily bowl was a re-do of a bowl I made last semester. For some reason the slip and glaze bubbled during the high fire, so I wanted to make another bowl to see if this problem would happen again. It looks like it turned out alright, though the lily had pink petals and the petals look grey with the celedon as the glaze.

Water Lily

I am pretty happy with the grenade piece though the color of the purple flowers didn't come through the celedon glaze. I talked with Siggy and she said she would bring in a book with a recipe for a high fire clear glaze. On some of my other pieces I really want the colors to come through and that won't happen if I use the celedon.

Grenade with flowers

I am also happy with the way my shaped cylinders turned out and a bowl I made for a friends birthday. I am sorry about the bad quality of photos because I took the pictures at work. I will try and get better photographs and post them on my Flickr account.

Friends B-day Gift - Angel Eyes, Wax Resist, Tenmoko

Angel Eyes, Wax Resist, Gold Shino

Tenmoko
Yellow Salt
Yellow Salt then Semi-Matte Blue on top

East Asian History Test

Today is the first exam in my East Asian history class. In nine more hours it will be all over with. Or course it doesn't help that I can't keep all the different treaties or peasant uprisings straight, or who was leading what government at what time. Oh well, I hope I can just BS my way through this. I keep telling myself I don't need an "A", but of course that doesn't stop me from killing myself studying.

Three things to look forward to this test being over with:

1) I have ceramics tonight
2) My stuff should be out of the high fire kiln and I can see what happened with the color slips and what the Celedon glaze did
3) I can work on jewelry, jewelery, jewelery...Ha ha ha ha ha

Off to work my day job until I leave to study for the test at noon. Keep your fingers crossed for me, because I am sure going to need it.

All Not Lost on Creativity This Week

Last night was ceramics class so I was able to do some creating. I have been working on a series of work dealing with my time in the Army.

I have been throwing bowls and plates and then drawing images that are military related. I just finished painting slip on two plates. One plate is an image of my very well worn boot with a dead tree in the background, with two green leaves still alive on the tree. I just completed the second plate, last night, of my brand new boot with a live tree in the background with flowers. I tried to show the difference between when I first joined the Army and when I got out of the Army.

Right before class ended I start painting slip on another plate. This plate has an image of the vehicle I use to drive with flowers and peace signs on it. Recently, a friend of mine said I was turning into a hippie, so I thought that was a great idea to use on one of my pieces. I would use a military vehicle and make the vehicle into a "Flower" mobile.

Study Guide - Rather Be Creating

I finally completed most of my history study guide last night. I still have one more class, today, before the exam on Thursday. I have at least 16 pages of notes for the word identifications and three to four pages for the essays.

The professor has two essay sections on the exam. The professor gives you four essays to choose from in the first section and then six essays to choose from in the second section of the study guide. You need to write at least two essays for the first essay section and then write at least three essays for the second essay section because you don't know which essays she is going to put on the exam, so you have to be prepared.

The next section the professor has are word identifications and you have to give a short essay on those ids she gives you. On the study guide there is at least 50-80 words and you write a definition for each of them. On the exam the professor gives you 12 word identifications and you have to write about six of them. By the time the exam is over with my hand has swelled up from all the writing I have to do.

To be honest I really rather have been making beads, working on a necklace or bracelet then I wanted to work on that study guide. I usually have at least five hours in making up the study guide, and then I have at least eight hours in studying for the exam. I am sooooo done with this!!!! Just two and half more months and this semester is over with and I can devote my time to jewelry, YEAH!!!!

What is getting me through this week until 4:15 p.m. on Thursday is thinking of the goodies I received over the weekend. I can create something with them this weekend. That is my mantra to get me through this week! Study, take test, and then create! Go me!