Beaches and Mugs...

Last weekend was warm and beautiful but not crazy hot so we took the afternoon to head to Torrey Pines State Reserve, a cliff side network of trails that lead to a lovely little section of beach.  The water temperature was supposed to be over 70 degrees and I managed to go all summer without dipping my toes in the ocean so I took my opportunity while I had it (for the record, it didn't feel like it was over 70 degrees, I'm a cold water wimp)...

It meant a hike back up the hillside with sandy socks but it was worth it!  We learned that when the water recedes there are a gazillion little sand crab critters just under the surface of the sand.  13 years living in San Diego and our friend, a So Cal native, can still show us new things!  We have a long promised beach bonfire in the works, this year we're going to hold him to it!

I've been absolutely horrible about remembering to take photos of my ceramic class pieces...maybe it's sheer embarrassment over the quality of what I'm bringing home but I'm happy to say that at least my pieces are showing improvement (i.e. getting larger and less lopsided!).

Love the way this green glaze ran into the white base...

I can at least say that I've been overjoyed with all of my glaze results on my pieces...with the exception of the (not photographed) mug that was supposed to be blue and ended up a yicky brownish color...apparently one of the glaze batches was mixed up incorrectly and a rather critical component was omitted by the student responsible.  I now know to avoid that one until unwitting newbies use it all up!

Another great glaze interaction with a wonderful semi-matte (but smooth) bronze finish...

This is definitely a good representation of my progress so far...momma bear, papa bear and baby bear mugs! (note the ugly old tile bar that was the "before" of my kitchen!) The little guy only holds about 8oz but the largest one can hold over 16 oz and has actually made it into my regular coffee mug rotation.  There's still a lot to be desired as far as the trimming and thickness of these mugs but at least the big one is functional!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the mug I sent off to Dallas to live with K, but I will have another piece to show soon that has the same yummilicious purpley red glaze.  It's a finicky one but it seems to like me.

Sadly the studio will be closed until October for tree removal and cleaning so I'll have to be disciplined about using my wheel at home to keep practicing.  I'll miss having access to those lovely huge buckets of glaze though!

So, should I keep showing my little misfit wheel pieces or would you prefer I stick to beads and pendants?

The Kitchen...

You may recall way back when I said I was refinishing my kitchen cabinets that I would show off the finished product once it was done...  Turns out that I opened a bit of a can of worms by starting the project and I didn't want to show the photos until I had finished everything!

So here we go with the tour!

The original kitchen cabinets in all their pale oaky glory...please note the off white laminate counter tops...(the glass mosaic backsplash went in a few years ago to cover up ceramic tiles that had been painted white by the previous owners).

The refinished cabinets which took me 5 weeks instead of the couple of weekends that I anticipated... Love the brushed nickel hardware, got a huge bargain at Overstock.com. It's hard to tell because of the florescent lighting but the cabinets have a nice overglaze finish that gives them more depth.

The problem with redoing the cabinets was that it made the counter top and florescent lighting look even worse so I decided I had no choice but to keep going!  We had led lights put in and I found granite that I fell in love with.  The added bonus was that I got to put in a new sink that's double the depth of my old one and we were able to extend out the counter ledge so it's wide enough for big platters or even barstools if we were ever so inclined.

I just love how it turned out!  Even with my itty-bitty kitchen it makes a big difference.  There may be a couple more projects in the fall (including a built in bookshelf along my staircase) if my friend's father is particularly bored during their visit in November!

In beady news, I finished the big update of new items to my website...including these...

and these...

and this...

and then went and fired my big daddy kiln loaded to the brim with more pieces! Of course halfway through loading the kiln I realized that I didn't have as many pieces glazed as I needed in order to fill the kiln, so I had to stop loading it in order to make a bunch more pieces to single fire and cross my fingers that they wouldn't warp.  Luckily almost everything decided to cooperate and other than some interesting glaze results that weren't quite what I was going for, it was a good batch overall.

Which meant that I photographed, cropped and resized over 140 pictures yesterday...whew! We'll see how many of those I can get on the website tomorrow, which sadly is my last day of summer break.

How about you?  Is your summer winding down or are you still going strong?  Is there anything you wanted to do this summer but didn't get around to or did you have one of those wonderful summers where you're completely relaxed and rejuvenated?

Frenzy of Baking...

I've logged some serious time in the kitchen the past two days in an attempt to outdo my birthday cake creation from last year for the hubster.  This year it's a Smore's Cake that I found (where else?) on Pinterest in an effort to one up another cake that I think I also found there originally, this one.  All I can say is...be very careful who you give slices of these cakes to...I think I was responsible for dramatic declines in work productivity for the hubster's coworkers and there may have been some hallucinogenic reactions to all that chocolate and sugar!

Unfortunately my cake is not looking nearly as pretty as the one pictured with the recipe (although I still expect the sugar Ka-Pow!-ness to be in full force)...perhaps it's a result of my significant modifications to the layers (i.e. eliminating the cheesecake sections in favor of chocolate cake) but I think it's more due to the ridiculous heat in my kitchen yesterday as I had the carpets cleaned and everything was open to get them dry rather than happily closed up with the A/C blasting as I've been enjoying for the past week!  So the plan is to apply frosting in copious amounts in order to cover all the flaws!

Between gift wrapping (I'm terrible, left it until the last minute this year although the gifts were purchased weeks ago at least) and final cake touches I will be adding to my website the new pieces that have been lounging around my bead table for waaaaay too long!  You'll know they're the newbies since I'm also changing out my background for the beads and taking a leap to photographing them rather than scanning them. 

I thought scanning was the easy way out to speed up my listing process but after the time to color correct in Photoshop, etc I think it's actually easier to just photograph the beads.  I still have to Photoshop them to re-size the giant files and crop but it's relatively quick (if 2 hours of just Photoshop yesterday can be considered "quick"...).  The slow part is putting them on the website so you'll see a trickle throughout the day...at least until the hubster gets home from work and the birthday celebrations begin!

I suspect after that cake there will be no more additions to the website...I probably won't be able to type :)

So, off to frost and a BIG Happy Birthday to my wonderful hubster!

Get To Work!

So I finally post after months of absentia then I disappear again!  Definitely need to get into a routine and back on track!

I've been holding out on big news and was waiting for a nice regular blog posting roll to slip it in but apparently my randomness isn't going to allow that so time to spill the beans...

Tucson or bust baby!  Not sure if I'm excited or scared to death but I'll have a table at The Tucson Bead Show February 9-11!  Who's going to come join me?  I'll need visitors and giggles and people to go out to dinner with (hopefully I'll have shoppers too)!  You can pre-register for the show right here to save time at the door.  There are still hotel rooms in Tucson available now too so this is a great time to make plans (and it won't be 134 degrees there like it is right now!). 

All this means is that I need to start kicking up my production...and no procrastinating!  So even though I'm going to try to start hoarding some pieces specifically for the show, I will try to be better about scheduling regular updates to my website with new pieces.

I pulled all the accent beads I had on my website and some others that have come out of the past few firings but that I haven't gotten around to photographing...I thought they would look better bundled up rather than just loose as I've had them in the past so I pulled out the raffia I have for my packaging and starting stringing them in batches.  The question I have though is what do you prefer for bundles?  Do you like groups of beads that are done in the same glaze or do you prefer a mish mash of coordinating colors?  I love this pile of bead colors all together but I'm also more likely to purchase monochromatic strands myself...

Also on that note, I finally took photos of pieces I've had kicking around for quite a while.  There are a few new glazes for reveal as well as some exciting color experiments that I'm messing around with.

There's this pretty green and brown that I am calling "kelp"...

and then this pretty rutile glaze...still chewing on a name for it...

and buttons! So many buttons!

So what would YOU like to see me make?  Sets, coordinating beads, colors...?