New ideas, new trial runs, like the butterflies. I'm  liking the idea of some summer wreaths and butterflies on summer wedding horseshoes.  I 've been looking as to how I could sell these on-line and I think once I have my boxes sorted I'm going to apply to the website 'Not on the Highstreet'. It seems a good way to sell initially.

 And whilst I play with my clay, Betty and Bomber sleep next to the wood burner. I lite this before I started so we could all be a little warmer.

Here's my business card, need to get this made into a stamp and a sticker. I choose owls as they are good luck in Burmese culture. I did a lot of fund raising  for a school on the Thai Burma  boarder a couple of years ago and found out they are a really superstitious nation.

First horse shoes, wedding fairs are something to consider. 

I've been sorting out templates to make different sizes of hearts and have some as garlands and some as solid shapes. They all seem to work well. I've decided to do that so I can order boxes to present them, sell them looking like a present. 

I made a batch of small ones today, I thought I'd see how long they take to do and start monitoring how long pieces take to make in comparison with how much I can sell them for, see if the designs are realistic I guess. Well that was the plan but I forgot to properly time myself as my hands got so cold! I need to change an element on the kiln and get the pottery heated up again. 

These little ones are about 10 cms long, I'll search for some fine ribbon for these.

Ah, good news! I'll be at the Frost Fair again next year, so pleased, and hopefully my husband too will be showing his paintings. Waiting now to find out about two other fairs I'm interested in doing.

Here are the first biscuit fired love hearts, they need a second firing to add glaze and colour, aiming to get a bunch ready for valentines day, and one for my mum.

And I've yet to fire any of these but have made a series of small whole hearts. 

Glaze firings should bring out the surface qualities even more.

Firing in winter!

This always takes a little longer as the pottery is cold right now. I set the kiln off yestarday morning and it slowly fired up through the day. Not sure what time it reached biscuit temperature, 1060 but this morning it has cooled down to 554, hopefully I'll be able to open it after teaching today.

 

I have to leave the windows open so the space doesn't get too hot but it still gets really warm, as a consequence everything dries out that bit quicker.

 

Even these bowls which I threw last night, they are ready to turn now and could possibly be too dry by the end of the day, I forgot to move them out!