What Inspires Us

The last time I was at Goodwill looking for inspiration I found  this tall multiple metal legged candle stand, complete with leftover white wired lace woven all around that can be used again. Since I'm in a phase of making sculptures to which I can add a weave of wire and paper, these looked promising as a different take on the whole business:  in this case sculpture added to the "wire."

Drilled through the center so that the sculpture could be attached to the stand via bolt and wing-nut. In the photo below the small bowl on the left will be the attachment point and the middle twist a "cap" that will fit over the top of it. The ball and piece on the right will be counterbalance weights at the base of the stand to keep it all from being too top heavy.

Haven't decided whether or not to add some more wire and paper to the wire itself. Guess I'll wait to see how the clay looks glazed, fired and attached.

Experiments

Time for some new work or at least work glazed and decorated differently. What better than a bunch of little cups to try out in various permutations of the many ideas I have.

The eye opener was that it was harder to make a symmetrical cone shape than it looks. Cut out shape after shape and they all had a short side.

Well, these are just glaze/decoration experiments so guess I shouldn't let their off-center shape bother me...even tho it does a little...

Piling on the Awards...

It's almost getting embarrassing... Another award was bestowed today via The Alchemist Weekly's Reader Poll. Best Potter/Sculptor this time. I'm not sure how I got nominated in either this or the Gazette-Time's poll, but it feels swell. Potters are seldom noticed at all, let alone win awards over other artists...

Now I gotta live up to all this hype!

Thanks everyone who voted.

First Etsy Sale

Something I've done since my first art fair is "prime the pump" with a purchase of my own as soon as I'm set up and ready to take sales.

Give a little to get a little.

So, finally after getting 14 items in my Etsy shop (which makes it look full at least on the front page of the shop), I thought it was time for me to make a purchase of my own.

While shopping I found a lovely silver crane necklace created to look like an origami crane. The perfect thing to gift the person who hand-folded almost 1000 cranes for our wedding. (People attending our party the night before the big day were able to whip up the balance.)
Then SURPRISE, this week my first sale came through after being on Etsy for less than a month. Three stars are on their way to Brooklyn. With the Etsy fee, the Paypal fee and mailing costs I'm just barely clearing 50%, which is my goal.
I hope to have time to read more of the Etsy blog posts about maximizing all the many tools there to generate sales. Coupons, specials, BOGO offers, etc. There is so much to learn. Some of it can be used in other areas of our art businesses, so it's well worth it to tune in.

If only there were more hours in the day...