Tis the Season

Well it Tis the Season to be busy...... and busy it is.

Last week I held my annual Open House which despite the weather was nicely attended and my sales outdid last year.  The past five years they have been steadily growing.  I tried to compare my first two years but did some different kind of book keeping then so I wasn't able to separate those sales from my other sales.

This weekend I took part in the SugarCreek Craft Show which has been going on for thirty years.  This was my first year to take part in it.  My tables were positioned right next to Linda Lineman from Lineman's Porcelain paintings.   Linda is another one of the artists in the National Transit Building (in fact she was the very first artist to have a studio.)  Now we have twenty three artists in the building.  So we would sit and chat during the down times and watch each others tables during potty breaks.  (At my age those are pretty frequent....  just sayin!)

My dear cousin, Debi Plyler came out to help too.  She helps me out when I can't be in my studio on Second Saturdays and with an assortment of other tasks.  We started setting up at seven AM and anyone who knows me, knows I am not a morning person.  (It was a long day yesterday.)  Today was a little easier as the doors didn't open until noon.  Debi had one of her migraine headaches and is such a trooper that she toughed it out today until the end.   (She's also a good sales woman; which I am not.)

Here's "Vanna" herself.

The venue is not really suited to my kind of jewelry (and prices) but who knows what may come of it.  It gets my name out there, it's a cheap form of advertising and hey....... we were right by the kitchen.  Yesterday I had a wonderful chicken salad croissant and today vegetable soup.  They had a nice selection of food to choose from.

Sales weren't the greatest but enough to pay the rent for January.  Besides I met lots of nice people, both customers and fellow vendors.  I'm going to do it again next year and who knows, maybe some people will be looking for me.

Just like fabric

My friend Carol Scheftic has been invited by Hadar Jacobson to be a charter teacher in her Accreditation Program.  Carol is a "big" fan of Hadar and has been working with her clays for a long time now.  So, when she said she would be teaching a class on using the powdered clays I jumped at the chance to join it.

It's not that I haven't worked with Hadar's clay.  Both Carol and I put off working with the base metal clays until some of the kinks were worked out.  (Not that there still aren't some problems, but not quite as many.)   I started out with the readymade copper and bronze clays but once I found Hadar's clay I never went back.  It has to be mixed with distilled water to make it pliable but it is much smoother and silkier than the other packaged clays.

It is this smoothness and silkiness that makes her clay perfect for the draping technique.

The clay is rolled very thin (1-2 cards thick) then folded and draped.

The clay can be left as formed or cut out with a cutter or template.

If using a texture, I found it best to roll the clay 3 cards thick first.  Then roll it to 2 cards thick onto the texture.  This draping technique really suits my design tastes (and it's fun to do.)  

Pete and I did our pieces in Carol's studio but due to time constraints we fired our pieces on Carol's new screened in patio.  

Check out Carol's blog for information on firing Hadar's clay.  

An older piece which I call "Tiny Dancer" (and was in a previous post) was created with Hadar's clay using the drape method.  This one was a free-form piece (no cutting from the shape.)