In more than one way. First, my portion of the hospital bill for my surgery was significantly less than I was expecting, so Yippee!!!

Second, I took a few minutes this morning to do a quick experiment before work. I had a greenware pendant which I painted with a dark gray slip (weeks ago). I saw a technique on my new Kristen Kieffer DVD about using acrylic matte medium as a surface resist. You paint the design on with the resist, then once it’s dry you take a sponge and wipe away the background, leaving a raised design. Here’s my first attempt:

The piece on the left is pretty much what the other one looked like, with the exception of the started-then-abandoned attempt at sgrafitto.

You can see in this picture that the design is slightly raised. I could have gone further but I was losing a bit of the resist along the edge and didn’t want to take my chances.

The acrylic medium will burn away in the bisque firing, then I can glaze it as usual. I’m very excited about this technique, as the designs I create will be 100% mine and not so easy to copy. I’ll be cutting another zillion pieces out of clay now for more experiments with underglazes and different colored slips.

The building where our tax office is located used to be a fabric store years ago (ie it closed during the early 80′s I think, since I very vaguely remember coming here).  I was up on the third floor and discovered these drawers which used to hold thread.  Hmm, wonder what I could store in there?

The small ones will be ideal for sorting the “ingredients” of my kits, and I’m sure I can find some use for the large ones.  It’s not a vintage wooden cabinet, but I’ll take it!

I’m feeling so much better this morning.  Amazing what some more meds and crawling into bed at 7pm can do for you. And then I arrived at work and popped open the kiln:

Sigh. I love it when that happens.

Mostly new glazes in this load. I went on faith and glazed a bunch of beads in the new glazes and it paid off. One of the glazes is glittery!!!  When I purchased it off the web that wasn’t translating in the picture, so what a cool surprise! And it’s not the glitter that spreads all over the place (like my nephew says, glitter is the herpes of the craft world: just when you least expect it you find some more).  Nope, sealed into the glaze.  Well, enough! I’ll let the pictures do the talking (hmmm, I suspect that perhaps little grubby fingers were on my camera lens–mental note to clean it).  It might take a few days but I’ll be listing some beads soon.

I didn’t realize till today just how exhausted I am. Between the nagging headache that I haven’t been able to get rid of for a week (even with prescription meds) and the fact that I’ve been working 6 day weeks for awhile now, today I’ve run out of steam. I managed to fire my kiln today, so I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll have a pleasant surprise when I come into work. I also think I’ll take Sunday off, since it’s my birthday. I think I might just sit in the recliner all day and watch movies. I need to rest up since my pottery classes begin on Thursday (yay!!!).

Isn’t that pendant adorable?  She’s listed in my Etsy shop. That’s a temperamental glaze that sometimes comes out purple, sometimes gray, but always very cool. Did I already write about this? If so, sorry! Didn’t feel like searching old posts.

I have some other items to list. I have the pictures taken and edited, but it’s just not happening yet.  Soon I’ll be able to tend my little shop again. I’m also planning yet another revamp of my website in the future.

Thanks for listening. I try to keep things positive around here, but every now and then everyone has to vent. I’ll stop now–off to pick up my son and head back to the hills.  I wish I had a driver.

Good grief–I’m not sure which image in my head is worse: the image of Culture Club or the image of Billy Madison doing that ridiculous dance on the stairs to this song.

I love my cheap-o rock tumbler.  I use it to tumble my bisque beads. It removes the fingerprints and smooths off any rough edges that the cutters leave.  All on its own. Without my help. Love it.

The white ones are fresh out of the tumbler, still wet.  There are a few beads in here that are intended for the Bead Dreams competition. I’ll be glazing the rest of them up and putting some kits together soon.  During tax season I’ve been collecting kit components, just waiting to get my pieces completed.  What kind of kits would you like to see?

I didn’t have my bisque bowl at the office when I went to fire my kiln the other day, so I made walls with the textured pendants which are intended for my glaze samples.  Only had a couple of escapees, which fired just fine anyway.

Can’t really think of anything else. I think I’ll go through my memory stick and see if there are any pendant pictures on there that I can upload to my shop, since it’s feeling very neglected lately (and my shop views and sales are reflecting that neglect). Enjoy the rest of the day.

I’m not holding my breath, because I do live in Maine with the understanding that we could have a foot of snow next week, but it is a beau–tee–ful day out there today! There’s a warm west wind blowing, and by this afternoon all the snow will be gone. Not that I’m complaining about the snow–we hardly had any at all, since all those big storms passed just to our south.

I do wish I were outside, though. I’m at work, doing taxes. We end up sitting here watching the first warm days of the year pass us by while we’re getting the druggery done. The trade-off is that we have the rest of the year off.

The whole banking issue seems to be straightening itself out, so this past week was a huge improvement over the week before. I’m also waiting for baby kiln to cool down after the bisque firing I did this morning. It dawned on me that I needed to get some product ready since I’ll be having some pieces in Beads 2010 and summer Stringing. How lame would that be to have an empty shop? 

Feels good to be playing in the clay a little bit. After I missed that week of work at the office, I’ve felt like I had to get in as many hours as possible. My missing work for one week during tax season (11 weeks)  equals someone else missing 5 weeks during a full year,  so I didn’t feel justified playing. We’re fairly well caught up–till the next onslaught of drop-offs which should be happening in the next week or so (those are the “oh my God we don’t have our taxes done yet and there’s 3 weeks left” crowd).

Well, I’m down to the end of my Chinese food, so I guess I need to get back to work.  I’ll leave you with another shot of spring.

Oh, and by the way, why are you inside reading this when you could be out in the sunshine??? Go!!! Scoot!!! (feeling a little like Ferris right now–bow, bow, chick—chicka chicka!)

I haven’t had much chance to play in the clay lately.  I glazed those samples this past week, and cut out a number of new textured pieces (above) for new glaze samples. I made a handful of beads, and that’s about it.  At this time of year I always feel guilty if I’m not working on taxes, since I only work full time for 4 months out of the year.  Haven’t had much energy to play in the evening after Isaac goes to bed, either.

On top of feeling frustrated creatively, we discovered this week that someone has had quite the shopping spree on our dime (they stole hubby’s debit card number from who knows where), so the week has been spent going back and forth with the bank trying to get things straightened out. They’ve been wonderful to work with, but it doesn’t lessen the frustration of seeing the money in your account dwindle when there are medical bills to be paid.  The card was blocked right away as soon as we discovered the theft, but some charges had been pre-approved and hadn’t hit the account yet, so a few charges trickled in at the end of the week. Now the card is bouncing, so the dirtbag knows we’re on to him. Hopefully he was stupid enough to have one of the packages shipped directly to him, so perhaps he’ll have an unwelcome visitor this week yielding a big gun and a badge. And a club. And some latex gloves…oh, the list goes on

Hoping to get a few pieces made tonight for the Bead Dreams competition. The clock is running out, and it would be a great excuse to fire what little I have.  So glad to have the little kiln–no guilt.

Heading back home to the hills. Poke me with a stick in the morning so I get up.

Pulled some beauties out of the kiln this morning.  (click on the images  to see the full size samples).  These are the samples of all my midfire glazes that hubby gave me for Christmas. I tested them on porcelain and a light brown stoneware.  The top of each piece has only two coats of glaze, while the bottom 2/3 are glazed in three coats. Some appear too heavy at three coats, so I’ll keep that in mind when I start to glaze pieces for sale.  The wheels are spinning: I already have some mold and glaze combinations planned.

Fun is over: back to work for me!

Or more appropriately, where’s Dot??  I’m here, in body if not in mind.  This is what I’ve been up to lately:

Yup. I’ve finished 118 tax returns, and have about 6 on my desk waiting for more info. Lost a week of work with the surgery, but we’re catching up now. Last night when I got home I glazed 22 mid-range stoneware and porcelain sample pendants with the new glazes that hubby gave me for Christmas. See:

All of these pieces are textured; this will give me an idea of how the glaze will run (if it will at all). Most of these glazes don’t even resemble what the finished product will look like: I can’t wait to crack the kiln tomorrow.

Break’s over! Back to working on a nightmare of a return. Serenity now!!!