it's beginning to look a lot like christmas!

i have made two sets of xmas ornie party favors... here's a sampling of one set ... 

 all together so far this Christmas season, i've made about fifty ornies ... for parties and friends and all sorts of reasons ... 

 some of them i did lots of the same .... and some are SUPER one of a kind.

i love the "making stuff" part of christmas .... and the giving stuff part too.

love much

i made this piece (11x14, i think) during my written collage class at life is a verb camp .... i sorta cheated because i KNEW what i was going to make ahead of time ....but i used the steps as demonstrations for the class .... in the meanwhile, at the camp auction that had started the day before, there was an EMPTY frame ... haha ... where i had some sassy note about how much would you bid on a painting that hadn't even been started yet! but, because of nothing more than camp love and faith, there was a bidding war going on before the first drop of matte medium had touched the canvas ... haha.... so when a lovely, lovely wonderful soul won the auction i was so happy  .... yay for people who love art!

written collage ....

that is the back of my car .... and all that stuff is for a workshop i taught at life is a verb camp .... written collage .... where i taught a bunch of collage techniques .... and then we did some calligraphy/font/handwriting celebration ... and everyone wrote something profound on their collage .... i LOVED doing it .... and had awesome, wonderful souls in my class ..... and lots and lots of successes ...

bright, bright underglazes ....

so i'm experimenting with less texture and more graphic design with underglazes .... these first four plates were done using my everyday lunch size plates as a mold .... mr.e.beck.artist asked how i got them so perfect when he saw them .... i wondered why they were so imperfect .... nice to be able to hear someone else's perspective!! love him.

 these plates are about 8 inches, i think .... white clay, underglaze and clear glaze .... food safe.

 this is a pretty big plate ... maybe 12 inches across .... working on my technique with designer liners ... i had trouble with them not flattening out when they were fired so i got some potty texture i didn't want and had to grind down some of those dots and reglaze the clear .... 

this is a good sized bowl ... maybe 14 inches across .... i'm pleased with the color and the graphic design and the happy and the bright ... but the clear glaze bubble on the underside .... so not quite right ... but pretty darn nice.

happy thanksgiving

happy thanksgiving..... i am thankful for a world of bright, lovely colors ... especially orange .... i am also thankful for all the people who color my life with joy and wonderment.... wishing you and orange, joy filled day ... and pie.

pottery, pottery, pottery ...

here is a round up of the pottery that i took to life is a verb camp ..... 

black and white and black and white and black and white ....

 i have a thing for the simplicity of black and white on the extravagant, unsubtle textures that i love so much ....

red + orange = plate

this plate is about 8 inches across ..... i used a weird rubber place mat over a slab of white clay. by pushing the mat into the clay it gave it some texture ... then glazed it with a mix of orange and red underglaze ... so all the color bits you see are raised texture ... (sold already, oh my)

different is beautiful ....

oh my .... this pear fills me with extra joy .... it is laden with wonderful happy reminders .... 

first: i did the background with susan and ann and dionne when they came over to my house to do art in my basement with me ... and having friends to do art with is high on my favorite things list ....so it had a happy, happy beginning for this painting .... so that's the first joyful memory related to this piece.

and second:  i made it with the intention of it being a sample for my life is verb camp collage workshop .... so when i got to camp i showed my wonderful class what i meant by having a papered background, a light glaze of paint over it and then a texture from stencil or stamps ... in this one it is an alphabet stencil .... so this piece was sitting on my demo table .... ready to become something ... and a nice memory of my class of most awesome people .... 

and third: i was doing a different collage to put into the auction but i liked this background so much i just knew i could do it too .... and then while rummaging through my magic painted papers i found this pear ....i believe it was meant to go on another piece of art but didn't make the cut (probably for size reasons, or it somehow it knew it needed to be saved for a later piece) ..... and i thought it would look perfect.... and i held it up to katie in my class and said, sorta flippantly, hey, whaddaya think about blue pears? and katie (so kindly) said, if you 're doing it, it will be awesome! .... so that's a great memory: so kind katie! 

and fourth: blue pears are kinda different.... and camp is kinda different .... and i dig different ... so different is beautiful sounded right. i thought that up ... and then tried on (in my head and aloud) about 20 other ideas .... but came back to the first idea, different is beautiful .... there is something to learn from that, huh? so happy memory four is thinking of the perfect thing to say for this unexpected piece for the life is a verb camp auction.... that kind of speaks to the whole camp experience.

and fifth: saturday night, when the auction was ending, i was wearing a dinosaur costume (that's a different story) , and when i walked into  the meeting room, there was ANOTHER DINOSAUR ... a new friend was dressed as a dinosaur too. what are the odds? zero. the odds are zero. we so beat those odds.  so my new friend in a dinosaur costume ("i'm so happy to see you! i thought i'd be the only one!") jumped from new friend to soul mate .... and my dinosaur soulmate bought the blue beautiful is different pear at the auction. that's a big happy memory of dinosaur onesie joy!

so ... this pear fills me with extra joy .... it is laden with wonderful happy reminders .... that's an awful lot of goodness smashed into a 12x12 collage.

pinch pots ...

i made a batch of pinch pots .... thick white clay bowls .... with texture on the outside... black wash underglaze to highlight the texture ....

 and bright colored insides ..... rainbow bright .... 

all ready to hold some change ... or your rings ..... or, in my case, to put your avocado pits to root in the window sill that is called the guacamole farm ...