My Sugar Jar

I love ceramics.  I'd love to do more work with clay.  It's just that my skin doesn't agree, and my naturally cold hands get even colder when working the clay, little twinges in the knuckles reminding me how osteo-arthritis runs in my family.  So I think I will stick with the limited amount of clay work I do to create moulds for my glass, and leave the real stuff to other people.

I was fascinated to read this post by potter Jude Allman about the process of making lids for her storage jars.  They are all so neat!  I loved the little jars she was making and decided to ask her to make one for me, but without the spoon hole.  I will use the jar to store sugar and I want to keep the moist kitchen air out as much as possible; too often I have ended up with a solid bowl shaped sugar lump.

My jar arrived this week and I'm thrilled with it, the neat shape, the subtle glaze, just lovely. Thank you Jude!

You can find Jude's work on Folksy and on Etsy and get a fascinating insight into her processes on her blog.

New seashore cards and notebooks

With all that's been going on I haven't had time to replenish the stock in my hypsela shop on Etsy lately and it had begun to look a little empty.  So now I'm officially 'on holiday' (ha!) that is one of the things at the top of my to do list (along with clearing enough space in the garage for a small glass kiln*).

I've had a set of little backgrounds waiting around for me to do something with them for a while and at last I've had time to finish them; some of them are already listed in the shop; the rest will be in there shortly.

*We had enough space for a short while yesterday but then apparently all the stuff that was piled up in the front garden had to go back in, and had to go into that particular corner...

Almost done

Very nearly at the end of my second year at uni now, the final assessment is over, we've had the last lecture, just tidying up now and helping the third years get ready for their degree show.  The year seems to have rushed past extremely quickly, I have learned a lot but this has only highlighted to me how much I still have to learn.  Ah well, learning is good.

Photograph by Russell Smith

I didn't quite get what I wanted (i.e. free standing forms) from this final project; I ended up with one rather distorted free standing form, a set of 3 broken bits, and a rather nice piece which doesn't curve enough to stand by itself but miraculously slots together with the one that does.  So we took what I had down to the beach again, in rather better weather this time.

Photograph by Russell Smith

While I didn't manage to control the form I am pleased with the textures and the effect of mixing the wire with the glass.  And the colours are very me, and very in keeping with our beach, which 'my' colours always seem to be.

Photograph by Russell Smith

Photograph by Russell Smith

Photograph by Russell Smith

You might have noticed that I have credited my photographer; I did take some photographs but his were so much better!  And at least this time he had worked out how to use the flip out screen on the camera so he didn't have to lie on the wet sand...  He will be off to college in the autumn to continue his own artistic journey; you can see some more of his work here.

Beach Treasure

I rarely come back from the beach with empty pockets, this time I brought back 2 mermaid's purses.

I try to avoid photographing anything in strong sunlight but this time it was perfect - it's hard to see where the squiggly bits (what are they??) end and the shadows begin.

On the beach

We took some glass down to the beach, my son and I.  It wasn't the best of days for photography and there is a lot I'd do differently if we try again.  Take something heavy for a start to stop the bags and bubblewrap from taking off down the beach as soon as I'd taken the glass out!  But we got some nice shots (well, he did...)

The things he does for his mum...

More glass... and some knitting

This week I have been attracting attention by sitting in the canteen at uni knitting with wire. Having previously related mostly to textiley people this seemed a perfectly normal activity to me (along with setting fire to things in the car park and wrapping up any old stuff I find...) but as there isn't a textiles course at my uni this simple act seemed to be a huge novelty to most people!

Having knitted my wire I then attacked it with scissors and deconstructed it a bit, and layered it up with scraps of float glass something like this ------>

This picture was taken on the workbench so by the time I'd transferred all the bits to the kiln it wasn't quite the same, but near enough.

A bit of guess work with the kiln program (it always is) meant that the result was flatter and less 'lumpy' than I intended but I was thrilled with the way the wire reacted and with the texture the glass picked up underneath.  I hope you're ready to look through loads of pictures now...  To give you an idea of scale they are each about 30cm tall.

And one without wire just to see...

At last, some glass

It seems I start every post by apologising for not posting more often, which is a bit daft really.  But now I have a couple of weeks off for Easter so I can catch up with  all  some of the things I haven't had time to do lately.

So I thought you might like to see some pictures of what I've been working on at uni lately.  Our last module required us to produce a 'marketable product' within a certain price bracket and to research selling venues and produce marketing material and so on.  I rather enjoyed this module, I got to do some maths as well as some making.

My design idea was to produce a range of textured dishes on a textile related theme.  Opting to work with texture rather than colour was quite challenging as I had to hand make moulds for each of my designs but I really wanted to see whether I could do it quickly enough to produce something affordable.

The textures are from some beautiful vintage Indian printing blocks I have.  Once I had made the moulds I started off working with float/window glass.  I like the way the green tint of the glass works with the texture, and it has the advantage of not being so horribly expensive that mistakes are a disaster.

 

This one was supposed to be the same rectangular shape as the other but due to a rather messy leak the plaster mould was too thin and snapped in half.  So I went ahead and used the broken half a mould and I think it works rather nicely as a square - this one was a happy accident!

Having proved that the moulds worked fine with float glass, I really really wanted to use coloured glass.  We're getting more expensive now!  Unfortunately the glass behaves quite differently from float glass and needs a completely different firing programme and although everyone had an idea, nobody really knew what programme I should be using.

Cue quite a few disasters (and remember we're using the expensive stuff...).  First we went too hot and ended up with sharp points on the edges, and pulled edges, and a hole where the glass had bubbled and burst.  Unfortunately there were 3 of these :(

Although,  some parts are really lovely so I am hoping to be able to cut away the dodgy bits and do something with the remainder.

Then we went too cold and had to try again... and when we did it was too hot again!

Finally, more by luck than judgement, we got it right...

So now I know the firing programme to use for this particular glass provided I fire it at the right hand end of that particular kiln... don't ever let anyone tell you glass is an easy medium to work with!

But I am so pleased with the result it was definitely worth the ups and downs.  And more importantly, I developed an efficient and cost-effective method of making the moulds I need.

So, finally the acid test, I'll be listing some of the dishes in my etsy shop next week and I'll find out whether I really did come up with a marketable design!