New Year Buttons

It’s a New Year and I’m looking forward to working on some new projects. I’ve spent the last couple of days making plans and writing out lists for developing my range of ceramics which hopefully I’ll be blogging about in the future. In the meantime though I’ve started to re-stock some of my basics. Today I’ve been making some buttons here pictured above freshly made and drying. (These buttons are currently available in my folksy shop in white and turquoise.)

At the moment while the weather is so cold and damp, things are taking much longer to dry in my studio. In fact it’s taking several days even for buttons to dry out when normally they would be ready by the evening or at least next morning. Some small flat items are also curling and warping which I don’t normally have a problem with. Initially I tried to avoid this by flipping the pieces over at various intervals to even out the drying on each side. This eliminated some of the curling but not all of it. So I’ve had to sandwich the pieces between sheets of newspaper and small planks of wood in an effort to keep them flat. Of course this means they take even longer to dry, so perhaps the logical answer would be to bring them into the house to speed everything up. At the moment though with clear nights and frost lasting all day in the shadows, it doesn’t feel much warmer indoors!

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll soon be moaning about things drying out too quickly. In the meantime however I just wanted to say Happy New Year to anyone reading this; hope you’re keeping warm!