Christmas Stock: New Ceramic Bells and Star Tea-light holders.

New Star Cut Out Tea-light Holders

Christmas is officially back on track! In my last post I mentioned I was having kiln issues. Thankfully these were resolved after fitting a brand new isolation switch. The new one is more robust than the last one - which burnt itself out. Hopefully the new one should do a much better job and last longer too.

I was very lucky that nothing else seemed to be wrong with the kiln. I ran a small test firing to check the controller and thermocouple were behaving themselves by programming in a simple ramp of 30 minutes to about 30 degrees. All seemed well. So I spent a week glazing all my pots ready to fire two separate glaze firings.

Un-packing Glaze Fire 

After packing one of these kilns, all I could do was cross my fingers, turn on the switch and hope it all worked! Luckily it did. In fact I had two perfect glaze firings - one of which you can see in the composite above. Some of these pots have already gone out to galleries or for orders. But the rest are available in my Folksy and Etsy shops.

Ceramic Christmas Bells

So now I have a new batch of ceramic hand bells in stock. They come in two glaze options: plain white, and blue and white. And I also have a new version of my tea-light holders with a star shaped cut out. I think they work really well - and I wonder now why I didn't think of making them years ago!

Christmassy Star Tea-light Holders

Events News:

I'm going to be exhibiting at Quarr Abbey again this year for six days beginning next Thursday. So if you're on the island please do pop in. Here's a listing with all the details.

Thanks for reading!

Christmas Tea-light Holders

On the last day of November we had a lovely frosty morning. So I popped into the garden quick with my camera to try to get some festive photos.

These Christmas tea-light holders with stars are made with speckled stoneware clay. On the handle they feature handmade beads made from porcelain and black clay. And to give them a seasonal touch, some gorgeous red glass beads, which are handmade too by my friend Anna Hayward.

Tea-light holders are not always easy to photograph. It's tricky to get them to look as cosy and magical as they are in real life whilst still trying to keep them in focus. Here's my attempt to show how cosy they can are in the dark too - they cast nice little stars on their surroundings.

Anyway, they're vailable in my Folksy Shop here! Merry Crimbles!

Candle Bowls

The women in my family have a thing for candles. A long time ago I bought my mum a candle in a terracotta bowl. I thought it was a lovely idea and I suspect mum did too - because she still has it on display in her house unlit after all these years! Back then I didn't know how to make pots - although of course I've always loved pottery. So when I started making pots, this idea kept popping into my head. Recently I thought it was about time I made some for myself. So here they are!

The thing I like about these candle bowls is that they are entirely handmade. I've made the bowl as usual - hand thrown on the wheel using stoneware clay. I chose to glaze on the inside only using a clear glaze so the natural bare clay shows on the outside. Then I've hand poured the candle too using quality soy wax from Aura. The great thing about these bowls is that once you've burned the candle you can clean the bowl and use it again. It makes them extra unique I think and gives them a life beyond.

At the moment I've only made unscented candles because I wanted to see the response. Already I've had a good reaction to them - so in the future I might consider using fragrances. In the meantime I'm also making a new batch of these candle bowls in a speckled clay and might consider colour glazes too. But I rather like the natural simplicity of them as they are now - they have a very calming feel I think. 

I'm really pleased with these candle bowls. They're lovely to have lit whilst meditating or doing yoga for instance and I've discovered they can be cupped in the hand and feel quite cool to touch too. They come with a little card to explain what they are and make perfect gifts for people who have a thing for candles AND pots!

These candle bowls are available in my Folksy and Etsy shops.

Tealights, Hearts and Valentine's

Making pots can be a fiddly process, especially when you start cutting holes into clay. You have to make sure the pots are wet enough not to bend or buckle under the pressure of cutting, but also not too dry or you risk cracking the clay. So when I decided to make these new tealight holders with a cut-out heart motif, I knew I'd be spending a long afternoon muttering to myself!

The hearts were made using a normal heart shaped cookie cutter - and the holes with normal hole cutters. Hole cutters are designed to make holes in clay of course, so they're fairly straightforward to use. But cookie cutters are generally expected to be used on a flat surface, cutting into dough or pastry. To use them on an elevated, curved wall - like a pot - requires a bit of care. But as long as you take time and put even pressure on the cutter whilst supporting the clay at the back, they cut quite cleanly. 

In a perfect world, the heart-shaped leftover cuts-outs could be used for making my double heart decorations (below). I've been making these little hearts for quite a few years now. They're popular as little gifts for people all year round; as gift tags, decorations, keepsakes and love tokens. But unfortunately the leftovers from the tealight holders were just too distorted (after all they'd been through) to re-use; so instead they had to go in the recycling!

But I'm pleased with my new tealight design. You may remember I made an earlier version a few years ago which was essentially the same, except instead it featured a series of different sized round holes. I think this new version with the heart motif gives them a different character: and it's always nice to give customers options. From my point of view it's also good to keep developing an existing design by returning to it and re-freshing it. Then you don't feel like you're making the same thing forever!

Luckily all my new heart motif tealight holders came out of the kiln safe and sound - just in time for me to put them in my Folksy and Etsy shops for Valentine's! Hope you enjoy them.

Candleholders Revisited

The kiln is on again today – another bisque. It was infinitely easier to pack this time round and for some reason seems to have taken no time at all to fire. Such is life with pots! But anyway, while the kiln is clicking away in the background I thought I’d catch up with some blogging.

A theme seems to have developed over the course of this year so far. In January I blogged about a small batch of hand-thrown candleholders I was commissioned to make. These also popped up in photographs I took of my first bisque firing in my kiln: both as pre-fired and post-fired pots. So it seems only natural I should blog about them again as a finished product.

I hope you’ll agree they’ve come out beautifully! I decorated them in two different glaze styles. One of these was using two glazes on the same pot: a deep honey brown glaze for the body with a small highlight of blue/grey on the handle. The other style was an all-over design using an olive green ‘wood ash’ glaze. I’ve already sold all the brown ones but the ‘wood ash’ ones are available for sale in both my Folksy Shop and my Etsy Shop as of today.

As I suspected, I ended up keeping one of these candleholders for myself….

Candleholders and Cold Clay Mornings...

Keeping warm in the winter – especially when there’s snow in the air – is tricky at the best of times. So just imagine what it’s like trying to throw pots! I always make sure I have plenty of hot water when I’m throwing – In fact it’s the first thing I do in the studio after putting on my overalls; boil the kettle for some piping hot water. But there’s no amount of comfort that can prepare you for the next stage. It’s difficult to describe just how shocking it is to plunge your bare forearms into a cold, damp plastic bag and wire off a slab of stoneware! Even if the room itself is warm enough to work in, the clay remains bone-chillingly cold in this sort of weather…

However, the show must go on! And recently (since Boxing Day in fact) I’ve been throwing regularly to try to re-stock on pots. Christmas was very good for me, but as a result I have almost nothing in stock except a few pots here and there. So I’m steadily working through a huge list of ‘priority pots’ (which at the moment feels like everything I’ve ever made!)

But it’s always good to try something new too; to keep things fresh. Above is a photo of a new design I made last week. I’ve always wanted to make candleholders but never seemed to get around to trying them out. So when I received a request recently for two candleholders with handles, I decided to have a go right away and made a small batch of six. I’m very pleased with them actually and they were fun to make too. I made them in one piece; a bit like throwing a lid with a knob. I threw the flat ‘saucer’ part first, leaving a lump of clay in the middle which I then pulled upwards into the candle ‘bowl’. Next day I gave the base a quick clean and added a small handle for carrying. And I’m looking forward to seeing how they come out – because I might be tempted to keep one for myself…