Meet My Little Beach Bum!

After some really busy and stressful weeks filled with tax returns and audits I managed to find some time to play in the clay. I have made this covered Crab dish that I call "Beach Bum."


I have to give my mom credit for the idea of making it a covered dish, I was just going to put the eyes in the bowl. It ended up looking ridiculous with the eyes being attached to the same piece the legs were attached to so I made the lid and put the eyes there. He's currently drying in the basement and I'll take him to be fired once he's bone dry.

24 days until tax season is over! Then there will be many more blogs posted, I promise!

Organization is Good for the Soul

Just wanted to share with everyone a picture of the new set up in my home-office.


I had some furniture in the living room that wasn't being put to use so I moved this shelf into my office and now have a place for all my finished pottery pieces while they wait to find a home! I love being able to display my pieces and, being a neat freak, I love the organization it brings to my office. I've decided a little organization is good for the soul...or my soul at least.

And a quick update, I have several planned projects that I hope to start this week, probably tomorrow or Tuesday night after work. One is a special order I'm doing for my old college friend, Sam, and the other is a Sand and Sea Turtle bowl for my old college buddy Brandon, as a house warming gift. He's moving to Florida in March and wants to decorate with a beach theme so I thought my design would fit right in! As for Sam's piece, its going to be a totally unique project and I LOVE the idea so I don't want to jinx it by writing about it too soon. Once I have the finished piece you all will get pictures and the whole story behind it so just be patient.
Also, I sold my little Sand and Sea Crab bowl to my aunt Lori in Florida. She saw a photo of it on Facebook and bought it for a friend of hers who saw the picture and loved it! I'm so excited it found a good home, and so soon after its Facebook debut!

Hope all is well with everyone and thanks for reading!

Hello Tax Season!

It has been far too long since I have posted a blog but I have to admit I grossly underestimated how time consuming tax season can be. As of last week one of the partners at the firm announced that we are officially on "tax season time" and therefore are required to work a minimum of 55 hours per week until April 16th. I have planned to work for at least 10 hours per day and then 5 hours on Sundays before softball practice to get in my overtime but I have already worked some 12 hours days through the week. The funny thing is, I love it! I feel so accomplished at the end of every work day and, in spite of my original assumption, the hours seem to fly by and it feels like my tax season work days are half as long as my summer work days used to be when I had no work to do and blogged all day.
Sadly, I don't even really miss the pottery. I'm disappointed in myself but I'm afraid I'm one of those people who could never be a true studio artist because I feel like I've already lost my motivation to throw. I don't miss my time on the wheel or spending hours at work thinking about getting home to throw anymore. I do love it when I do get up the energy to throw, but I feel like I have to force myself to get going at it anymore.
I did, however, spend a good bit of time the week before last making glass bottom bowls Pura-Vida. I really did enjoy going down to the basement to throw some simple forms and I loved glazing them too, which is normally more of a chore for me. I've decided making bowls is my favorite thing because the more odd-shaped, the more unique and they're very simple, which leaves little room for error. And I love seeing my glass bottom bowls once they've been fired!
Charlie, the owner of Pura-Vida, wanted these bowls so badly I had to pick them up from Odyssey and bring them to him immediately, so I did not get pictures of most of them. There are a few I picked up the following day though, a few stragglers that didn't make it out of the kiln in time and will be brought to the shop at a later date.


He also took all of the "Sand and Sea Turtle" bowls I had made and loved them too! This was really exciting because I feel like now I have some of my signature pieces out there for people to see! Also, I've tried out a new design with a crab and it turned out so cute.


I've also done a little jewelry making, but all as gifts thus far. I took the beaded charm idea I used for my friend Chelsey's superman necklace and have done some other pieces.

This is a pin Tenzie asked me to make for his mom (her nickname is Bee). He bought the bee bead at Studio Stroll this past November and asked that I make it a flower. I really liked how it turned out!

My best friend Lizzie was going through a tough time recently so I decided to put together a care package for her. We had just talked about how we couldn't believe she didn't have one of my pieces so I made this cute little drink necklace for her and put it in with her care package. Her favorite drink is a Cosmo with lime so that's what I made!






And also my little sister, Michaela, is turning 13 this year. She was born on Leap Day so this year she has to celebrate on March 1st. I made her this jewelry set, with necklaces and snap on charms (like Tenzie's), complete with beaded guitar charm.

To My Faithful Followers

I wanted to send you all a quick note and apologize for my lack of blogging. These past few weeks I've been under some major stress, both from personal issues and work.
Tax season has begun (yes in January!) and I'm finding work mentally exhausting. I come home and want to just veg out in front of the TV or read a saucy romance novel that doesn't require too much brain power. I hope to make more time to throw in the coming week though.
Also, I am off to the Odyssey in just a few minutes to glaze a new group of bowls. I was asked to renew my contract with Pura-Vida and the owner asked for glass-bottom bowls a while back. So I plan to get this group of bowls glazed and see what he thinks about selling them for me as well. I'll post pictures of the bowls later this week before (hopefully) putting them into the gallery.
Thanks for not giving up on me guys and there will be more posts soon!

Christmas Gifts

Happy New Year everyone! Ok...so it's January 14th already, 2 weeks after we all rang in the New Year but I JUST finished Christmas! Yes, I have managed to stretch Christmas out until January 14th!
Ok, so I actually had about 5 Christmases. I shared the traditional one with my parents and sisters, spent the following day with relatives in Tennessee, last week spent a night with my aunt and cousin visiting from Florida, did a Christmas with the housemates this week and finally finished up tonight by exchanging gifts with my boyfriend. So now I can finally post photos of all of the Christmas gifts I made because they have now all been given!

I gave my parents a 25-piece dish set. Here is their large serving bowl with two small salad bowls. I forgot to get pictures of the plates and will post those later. I started this set back in late August or early September and have several plates made with different glazes, trying out different greens before finding the one I settled on. I even started out by melting glass in the grapes but ultimately decided to just glaze them. I'm really happy with how the set turned out in the end but it was a huge project that I won't attempt again for a long while.


Here's my mom's tea mug when I first got it and then the first time she used it. I glazed it with the same purple I used in the grapes on the dish set. Its such a cool design, with the pocket on the side to hold the used tea bag. And of course I had to add a little something to make it my own so I put a snail on the top of the handle.




This is a milk and cookie mug I made for my dad that also matches the dish set. I made one for my sister Michaela too, its blue. They're similar to the tea mug but with a bigger side pocket, perfect for holding Oreos.


I made this cute little mug for my other sister, Megan. The handle is a snail and its glazed in her favorite colors. She drinks a lot of tea and coffee so I knew I could make her any kind of mug and just have fun with it. There's even a picture of her using it.






I sent my grandmother and great grandmother teapots which I showed pictures of in an earlier blog and I didn't want my grandfather to feel left out so I made him this mug. I glazed it with floating blue, the same glaze I used on my frog jar with legs, but it came out with pretty purples and browns too. It was the prettiest glaze I've ever had come out on one of my pieces, I loved it!



I had the housemates gifts planned out a long time ago but getting them done was another story. Matt had asked for a "Thor Mug" months ago and I finally got the design right and got it made. Its basically a mug made to look like the comic book character, Thor's, hammer. I basically just hand-built a square mug that I glazed and painted silver (it has at least five coats of paint), did a handle that I wrapped in suede and finished it by painting the Thor symbol on the side.
David's gifts were easy, I made him four matching apple baking bowls. He's made us all baked apples before and had seem the bowls at a festival a while back. He really liked them and they were really easy to make.

Brad's gift was by far the most trying. I've written about it multiple times, how the final product was at least the fifth attempt. I made his first teapot and the glaze went on too thick and it cracked in the kiln, I attempted to throw at least three other teapots that failed, I ended up with two donut shaped vases because they never got a spout or handle and I made one beautiful teapot before this one and broke it on the way to the Odyssey. So this is was the final result and Brad's gift.

And finally, I gave Tenzie his dragon bowl. See, Tenzie told me that he "doesn't do pottery" so he was a challenge because I had to make something he would really like. He doesn't drink coffee and he's still in college so nice dishes were out of the question. So I made him this dragon bowl instead. I went kind of crazy with it too. It took about five hours to throw and do the hand building work then I glazed it and then hand painted the details metallic green and red, his spikes and eyes and everything. I even lightly brushed the red over his whole body and then rubbed it off so it would stay in the scales. I painted paper and then laminated it for the wings, they were the final touch he needed to really make it work. I love him!

So those were all of the Christmas gifts I made this year. It was fun but really stressful and I'm hoping next year I'll have my own kiln so I can get pieces done faster. I'll be starting earlier too, with or without my own kiln.
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Thanks for being so patient with me, I promise to be writing more often again, now that my holidays have finally ended!