SweetMyrtle

december love #3 winner and some pots

Thank you for all your lovely comments about my images in my december love #3 giveaway post.

Tracy Dragonfly's name was pulled out of the hat so i shall be posting the postcards off to you Tracy : ) do pop over and visit Tracy's blog. she is posting each day during advent, so there are lots of lovely posts to read.

thank you to everyone who has been leaving comments and taking part in my december love giveaways. It feels really great to give back to all you wonderful supportive twitter & blog friends.

my first thrown bowl

i shall be adding  a few more giveaways this week,  i am not sure what yet but please do enter, even if you have already in previous posts. you never know, it may be something ceramic!

a dish with pressed in decoration and  glazed using oxides made at my pottery  class this term

 

Well Christmas is tumbling towards us and tonight i ran our last evening workshop of the year; a festive evening with mulled wine and mince pies as well as some sewing. we were making flower brooches and there were some delicious colour combinations going on... just gorgeous!

tomorrow's final workshop of the year is with our children's group who will also be making  brooches. we shall be helping them to create festive brooches of robins, christmas puddings & snowmen. i am really looking forward to it!

wishing you a lovely last few days of the week and i shall pop back with another 'december love' post soon x

 

hello x

i just wanted to pop and say hello x.

i seem to be finding it hard to blog just now... with the business of life , work and all.

i really love my space here and i love to post and share and connect with blog friends and miss it when i have been away for a while.

i am snatching a few moments  on the busiest day, of my week. (i teach 3 workshops today; one morning, one after school and one evening) as i wanted to share our wee houses of clay we made at the weekend at another of Lucy Burley's amazing family workshops at the West End Centre.

here are two of them slip decorated and ready to be fired.  so much fun to build a house in a day! they are actually something specific, can you guess what we are going to do with them?

Wishing you a happy Wednesday

G x

beginning...

 life often encourages us to grow and  improve with those areas we are already fairly familiar but there is often a fear connected to commencing something completely new.this is a shame as to enter something new with no expectations or preconceptions can be so freeing.

i have many ceramic artist friends and have often wondered about having a go at pottery and just out of the blue last week i finally signed up for a beginners class and i am so pleased that i did as  it is wonderful to enter at a place of no knowledge and to approach the subject in a gentle and exploratory way.

so far i have learned how to create a simple pinch pot.

by creating a sphere shape with a lump of clay and slowly pressing one thumb into the centre a pot can be worked by rotating slowly and pressing with thumb and fingers to create sides to the vessel and slowly this fashions a pot, a pot which bears indentations of the creators hands. these can be smoothed out or left in as desired. there is something quite meditative about pressing and forming a lump of clay. i had an inkling that i would enjoy it and i so did!

my pot from week one is waiting to be fired. this week i took my camera along to document some of  the processes i am learning.

this time i fashioned a smaller pinch pot and put it to one side to harden up a little. when i returned to it i added some coils. these are long thin sausages of clay. think rolling out plasticine as a kid. my coil became so long i had a sudden childish urge to add a snakes tongue and eyes to one end, but i resisted!

this is the pot waiting to have the coils added

notice the top edge is scored and a slip (a liquid clay) added. I also did this to the first coil. this helps the pot and coil to stick together.

here it is with coils added. i wished to curve the pot inwards so each row of coils rested slightly further in than the previous row.

the coils were then smoothed inside and out.  i have put the wee pot to one side now till next weeks class. i have covered so it won't dry out, and will return to it.

i am looking forward to more explorations with clay and will post some of the things i am learning  in my space here or over a my flickr space.

 wishing you all a happy weekend

x