HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

A Day of Hearts

 I love Valentine's Day. Not because I am expecting flowers, candy, or dinner out. I enjoy it for completely unromantic reasons. Valentine's day give me the opportunity make and deliver simple surprises for people that I love. This year I decided to make a string of hearts for my special great niece, Arianna.

It ended up being a little more involved than originally intended, but it was a nice break from clay. I worked on it in the evenings, when my work was done for the day.

"Happy Valentine's Day" is a lot of letters when they are all strung together!

 Tonight I boxed the hearts up along with a siamese cat figurine that was a gift to me from my Memere when I was just about Arianna's age. My Memere would have been her great-great Memere.

We have been enjoying some warm days here in Seagrove, NC. I took advantage of the weather and did a good mopping and cleaning of the studio, while the bisque kiln is firing. Jeff is busy making glazes. We will fire a glaze load in the next few days.

cheesy inspiration

 A couple of weeks ago I saw a simple tutorial on Pinterest about how to make a wedding ring dish. I thought it was clever so I pinned it to my "crafty ideas" board. I don't feel it meets the criteria to be on my ceramics board because I don't think it takes much talent to make these.

I tweaked it some and cut the dishes into heart shapes. I have lots of doilies made by my mother and grandmother and they add a nice lacy texture.

The holes are used for ribbons to be tied on. Some couples use these little dishes for the ring bearer at their wedding ceremony. Jeff teased me about these, asking if I was going to start imprinting cheesy inspirational words on porcelain dishes... you know that whole "live, laugh, love" fad that's been hanging around for a few years... you can even buy inspirational paper towels these days. His teasing led me to think about making some in the vein of Valentine's Day conversation hearts and imprinting them with sarcastic words... boy could I have fun with that!

I used some bowls as a slump mold to get the curve I was looking for. Should I decide to continue with these I will throw some bowls and bisque them for this purpose. I lined these with plastic wrap so that I could get them out of the bowl once they set up. With a bisqued bowl they would set up a little more quickly as well. Today I will slip trail a few with a colorless porcelain slip. I used porcelain for these and my plan is to experiment with some Amoco underglaze on the texture and words and then glaze them in my Temple white. Lori Buff had some nice results with the underglaze and texture, you can check out her results here.

Aside from a little playing this weekend, I did complete a bunch of small pitchers. We will have another load of pots to bisque fire very shortly. Jeff fired the gas kiln yesterday, while I worked at the Co-op gallery in town. I glazed a few pigs in some new colors this time, I'll post some pics as soon as we are cooled down.