and the answer is yes....

oh yey....thanks petar for your super help today nothing like having an expert grouter around, cheers......

are we there yet??

are we there yet??? well oh so close...heres yesterdays efforts and yes i really did break out the angle grinder...

the panorama image really does make the table look longer and a little blurry in the middle..

so all glued down and grouting today back on the video i think... should be a satisfying completion..

and just for something odd while i remember it..
.... weird is all i can say....what must go on in my head as i sleep....there's the police who 'pull me over' for pushing the car from behind and sus the car because it's too small!! I'm like it's a rental. kinda the size of on old fiat but new...and then i'm being chased by the nicest hit man who tells me i must get out of his block which i can't get out of and he keeps popping up in the strangest of places...the car of course is useless as a getaway vehicle and there i am trying to drive it up some stone steps up a hill?????and what would a dream be if you didn't end up in the river with your car full of miniature cows????? pffffffftttt!!! weird man...!

now that's what i call a kiln filler...

Created with flickr slideshow.

as i caused a minor catastrophe breaking some of the tiles for table 1 i had to do an emergency kiln load along with the recuts, and i'm happy...i did some slump plates using the textured rolling pin on the backs combining some ideas from the print workshop and my last glaze fire....happy jan!

piece by piece....

I've always enjoyed a jigsaw puzzle at christmas time...so this year it's just on a larger scale!!! so here we go table #2, there's some very special sections in T2 as well as T1 so i'd love to get my friend to photographically document these before they go to their home down by the beach....it's been such a mammoth project and i will miss them.. seems quite strange really but it's been more than a commission and i really hope lots of fun times are had around them...

i'm cracking the glaze kiln tomorrow and hope to have figured out the firing schedule now that the kilns have new elements they're shooting up no problems at all..

and a few new pieces in the kiln too, i'm trying out some hand building for a bit trying to put more of the imperfections back into my work and combining the raku clay and some printed transfer deco along with some slip layering woohoo pics soon...

have a super week and hope you all had a great christmas some super time with family and friends....me i'm personally sing starred out for a bit!!!

plates or not plates....

some new pieces i'm playing with definitely inspired by the last tile batch i made at the print workshop and with some slip deco techniques from dougs place too a few finger dabs and my new tool the tooth kidney!! its getting into warm season here so there wont be a huge amount of drying time to play with these guys were cracking at every opportunity...

anyhoo have a super christmas everyone, its very quiet here with family away in the UK for christmas so who knows a few friends for dinner....

marki market....

what a beautiful day!! i was on my way to roses this morning cruising through the hills thinking i haven't seen much wildlife lately!! usually there's a kangaroo or 3, ducks, a koala crossing the road but lately nothing!! so what do i see around the bend? a couple of emus strolling casually down the road towards me 'ahhh'! avoid... swurve.....ok that's my wildlife fix for a bit!

so a stunning day, we set up in record time and the crowd was teaming, the coffee queue was super long hence only one trip for rose,.... heaps of visitors as per usual and a very special visit from our good friend ali who was absolutely superb at helping pack up so we could get to the pub on an early minute....yey ali...

off to sleepies, i'm exhausted...ciao all, have a super week wherever you be...

a few panoramas around our stall taken in the quite moments today....

le tablerrrrr...

friday and saturday sticking, cutting, cutting, sticking, dropping oooops!! sticking, cutting, sticking, dropping oooops!!! ' i did it again'!!! thanks for the cue...so friday exhausting and all i got done was sorting table 1 from table 2 tiles and glueing to the mesh..

method being all the spacing sorted pre gluing then cementing down sections one at a time.. the dropping was not planned of course but there ya go i was having dreams of dropping tiles, at least it was only a few..

so saturday was cutting the edge strips and happy cementing, phew that was one long day... i got home 9.30pm cooked tea sat down watch some tellie and got half way through a show and my glass of wine only to have a power cut...so i sit and wait ooh theres the flicker is it comng back on? nope flick off again!! ok wheres my mobile?? on the desk it's pitch black and i creep across the room to my desk and grab the phone.. click oooh light yey!! now wheres my candle stick and...where's the matches?? so anyhoo an early night for my aching back and luckily my pod charged up so at least some music to drift off to.....

allo, allo, allo.....

you'll never guess what i did this afternoon!!!
it took me ages to get the tables separated....but now we have some order and tomorrow is cementing these guys down wish me luck and still videoing the gig so it'll be an epic when finished....

below pic ....i though this was a cool abstract piece, i'm looking at all these shapes now and sure some more inspiration will come from all the rejects.....

the ceramic tile store just down the road has been so great with info and sorting out all the bits i need, thanks to kevin also who's working really hard on a work project right now and misses out on all the fun of putting the tables together, oh well you can sit back and rant at me later in your most encouraging tone as you always do when they're finished...

more later.... ciao ciao...

12 days of mayhem...

I pinched this one from Hannah this morning...

interlude...

hey all a little interlude in the table construction and a quick kiln filler time as 4 tiles decided to warp out in the last firing....oh yey...

so a few flat plates and some new hand built plates as you may remember the screen workshop pt 2 was play time for me and i've decided to repeat the textured backs which you can see above and i just realised i didn't take pics of the backs i must rectify that tomorrow, my list is growing and no pressure or anything this week.. HA!!.....

How many times have you witnessed someone picking up your wares and immediately check out the bottoms???? so this is kind of a 'surprise ending' so to speak... in the bucket a stack of tile recuts ready for recycling...and a few buckets of mush that have been waiting for the same for ages...

and the last tiles below are ready for inscriptions to go under the tables on completion with a dedication note for the clients... so here's to a busy week getting sorted to cement these guys down and working out all the finer details....

my open studio sale went well, a little quieter than last year and perhaps my marketing needs to be bumped up a notch...chats later on that one...

open studio christmas sale

hi all, hope you can drop by..sat 12th dec 10am - 4pm... my address is on the flyer, cheers all..

fresh slideshow...

Created with flickr slideshow.

ah at last!!... my last cone 6 firing.. lovely new teapots also in the black satin glaze...spot the blunder on my colour cups!! not half hard eh? note to self write a note to self on making cups!!

i'm off to the urban cow studio tomorrow with some new pots and firing the last kiln load of table 2 tiles...

and if you're nearby this saturday is my open studio, hope you can drop by and have a cuppa and search for some gifts...cheers all, happy week in the clay stuff...

fresh...

here's a little sample from my last firing....the plates from print workshop came out fab... there's underglaze deco, glaze colour and layering of glazes too, all makes for a rather rich surface...so now all i need to think about is imagery that i'd like to use over and over... i really like the scroll pattern that simone had and everyone went crazy over the face images so i'm thinking i may tweek that idea... the 1st plate also has a textured back, it was rolled out with a pastry roller and has come up yum..

so a quick update i'm onto the last couple of glaze firings for the table tiles and i'll put something together soon with vid, ah the deadline looms!....