Monday, September 25, 2006

Double Trouble, Boil And Bubble...

Next month, I'll be leaving for Italy [insert very excited squealing here]. I'm totally pumped! I minored in Art History as an undergrad in college, so going to Rome and Florence is a lot like visting the Holy Land for me. I'll be closing down the shop from the 11th-29th, so if you gotta have something before Halloween, I suggest you buy it now.

I have a few more items to list over the next couple of days. This is an adorable little
bubbling cauldron charm that's all set to be made into a zipper pull or a simple small pendant on a necklace. It's quite cool with all its little bubbles and over-flowing green soupy goo... I also have a matching pair of earrings listed, and they're currently still available.

Alrighty...Back to the clay...

Saturday, September 23, 2006

More Of My Painted Pottery...

More crazy pottery photos...



This pic shows a few of the pieces I've been painting for my own kitchen set. I looked high and low for dishes with this exact retro/modern pattern and color combo with no luck. So I thought I'd just paint my own, damnit! This is a very long and tedious project since they all have to look the same. I still have 4 plates, 3 cups, and 2 bowls to do. Ouch.

Here's a mug I did a few months ago in homage to one of my absolute favorite flicks, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Ahhh, I love that movie. The front of the mug, as you can see, has the film's logo (a real pain in the arse to paint lettering that small, might I add).

The back has a crayon ponyfish adorning it. Ain't he cute?

More pieces are getting listed in the shop, slowly but surely. I still have a couple custom orders to do, but they shouldn't be too hard to get done. Came up with a nice new charm design that references those totally awesome aluminum trees from bygone days. A year ago I was absolutely obsessed with the things and had to have one. But it's a little difficult to get your hands on an authentic one of decent size that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Sigh. Some day...

Friday, September 22, 2006

Hand-painted Functional Art

Over the next few weeks, I'll be gradually listing more goodies in the shop. But I thought in the meantime, I'd show some of the ceramic pieces I've painted lately. Generally speaking, and I really wish this sounded more modest, I'm pretty good at painting. I love both oils and acrylics, but recently, due to my job, I've found a new fascination with ceramic glazes. They're so much more challenging than any other paints I've used, due largely to the fact that they change so drastically when they go through the kiln. It's always quite a surprise.

This first piece is my lil' baby. I worked on it for a whole month and it's the first in a series of pie plates I'm doing that depict juxtopositions with the sweet pies they'll one day contain. This has a serene sky on the outside and a flock of dead blackbirds within.

The cool thing about pie plates is that you can do some crazy stuff to them, since the artwork is getting covered up and then gradually becomes visible. I just love that.

This next piece is an octopus sushi platter. I never eat this much sushi, but I love the long shape of the piece and thought it'd be fun to do something dramatic. A little hard to tell, but the octopus is actually a dark chocolate brown.

I'll post more images a little later. It seems Blogger is having issues with my file sizes (what can I say? I like large picture files).

Friday, September 01, 2006

Oceanic Gift Tags, Ahoy!

Okay. I did it. Hand-drawn gift tags with tons of oceanic flair are now up for grabs in the ol' shop. I just love making fun little ephemeral stuff like this, so I thought, what the hell? I know when I give gifts this year I'll be attaching little hand-drawn gift tags just like these because they just make a package so much more cooler. I mean, c'mon. A squid? An octopus? AND a sting ray?! What's not to love about that?

This actually brings me to another point I've been thinking about lately. Christmas gifts. That's right, the big "C" word. Am I uttering it a little too soon? I'm thinking about giving everyone I know some hand-painted pottery done by yours truly, since I get a massive discount at my ceramic studio job. I've done some amazing pieces in the last month that I'm incredibly proud of--I may just have to whip out the digi cam and snap a few photos to throw on the blog. For some odd reason, I'm on a massive squid/octopus and bird kick. I can't paint me enough birds and cephalopods
!