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!

Christmas Bells and Chimes

For this Christmas season I wanted to try some new decoration ideas. Coming up with ideas that feel new and fresh isn't always easy. Sometimes it can feel like everything's been done before - and it's tempting to just dust off the remainder of last year's stock and hope no one will notice! So to look for inspiration I thought back to more traditional Christmas themes - and struck upon the idea of bells.

Bells used to feature much more in Christmas decorations than they do these days - or at least so it seems. Along with candles, yule logs and ivy. But rather than just make some decorations in the shape of a bell, I decided to make the actual bells themselves. 

Each bell is hand-thrown 'upside-down' just like a small deep bowl. Then the 'bases' are turned and rounded off to form the top of the bell cup. I decided to add small hook handles on each of the bells. This gives them flexibility; they can either be rung by hand as handbells or hung up by a cord to chime in the breeze.

I'm very pleased with the results. Each bell is one of a kind - each slightly different in shape, glazing combinations or handle style. And of course each bell chimes differently too! I think they make lovely gifts - and the best thing about them is, that they're not just for Christmas. They're perfect for decorating the home all year round and even for the garden in Summer too.

Available now in my Folksy Shop and Etsy Shop. 

UK Handmade Tutorial

Just a quick blog today to mention that I had a tutorial published on UK Handmade site this week! It’s a tutorial for making my ceramic heart decorations which you can see in the picture above. I’ve been making these little decorations for a couple of years now. At first I made them especially for Valentine’s Day, but they proved popular all year round and so I often make small batches for my Folksy Shop or for sale at shows and at my local Arts Centre - where they do quite well as little gifts for visitors.

I chose these hearts because I wanted to do something that was easy enough for beginners and people new to ceramics to try out – although I think the tutorial also demonstrates just how many stages are involved in even the most simple of ceramic ideas! (Pottery is always more complicated than it looks.) But I hope people enjoy the tutorial and maybe find inspiration for making their own designs in ceramics and in other media too.

I had good fun doing this tutorial actually. In fact ‘the making of’ the tutorial could be a whole DVD extra in itself! I decided the best way to illustrate this Make was to show photos of me making ‘in action’. This required positioning my tripod at a precarious angle to get in close enough and then using the ten-second time-delay on my camera. So imagine lots of running backwards and forwards around a table cleaning my hands each time and checking the camera for focus, battery life and to make sure everything was in frame. Add to this the fact that I was in my un-heated studio back in January and that might explain why my hands look absolutely freezing! Oh the glamorous life of a potter…

Anyway, just to say many thanks again to Charlotte Hupfield at UK Handmade. And here’s a link to my Make and here’s a link to the hearts in my shop.

After the show: Quarr Abbey

(Festive berries in the abbey grounds)

It’s been a few days now since the end of our 6-day show at Quarr Abbey. We were very busy for the whole week and had an excellent time. We counted just under 700 visitors in total through the door which we’re pretty chuffed about! And all of us who exhibited had a very successful week. This was also the first time I’ve been able to show my paintings alongside my pots instead of just one or the other – so it was really good to hear what people thought. And luckily the responses to both were very positive! So all in all it was a successful event.

In fact we were so busy most days that we didn’t get much time to enjoy the abbey grounds for ourselves! The abbey is a lovely place to visit. As well as the new gallery/exhibition space (which has a changing show every week) there’s a tea room, gardens, a bookshop and also some country walks on the land owned by the monks which include the ruins of the old monastery. I did manage to get away from the gallery to take a few pictures though and above is a composite of some of them. The top row shows an exterior and interior of the main church while the image below is an interior shot of the Pilgrims Chapel (which was lovely and peaceful inside). And finally of course I had to include a picture of the gorgeous piggies that live on the abbey grounds!

The composite image above shows an exterior of the building which houses both the bookshop (on the right of the arch) and the new gallery/exhibition space (on the left) which was where our show was held. The image on the top right is a view of my ‘stand’ including pots and paintings (you might recognise the pear picture!) The image directly below this is taken looking back into the room towards the main entrance across some of the other stands in our show. The little red Christmas star decoration is mine by the way: these were one of my best sellers and I have only a couple of these left now!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy looking at these pictures. Here are some links to the abbey website and also to my fellow exhibitors. Thanks guys for a lovely week and to everyone who came to see us!

Quarr Abbey

Gill Chapman

Henny Penny Designs

Lis Toft

Sue Wright Handknits

Is it Valentine's?

(buy these little ceramic hearts here)

I've been photographing these little ceramic hearts in the past couple of days. Here's one hanging up on the edge of the door in my studio. I started making these back in September but somehow things conspired to get in the way of me listing them in my shop until now. So I've been making a mad dash to get them ready before Valentine's Day next weekend. I'm hoping though - since they're so pretty - they'll be the sort of thing that people might like any time of year and for all purposes: not just as little love tokens but as gift tags on special presents, for accessorizing, for crafts - or just for hanging up on a door and looking pretty!

I'm also in the process of re-organizing my Folksy shop at the moment: doing a bit of spring cleaning and changing stock around. I recently sold some items 'off-line' to a lovely local buyer who came to my studio and I also gave a large consignment of stock to a local arts and crafts gallery/shop. So it's been quite a hectic and exciting beginning of the year already - but my poor shop has suffered for it. I hope to add more items soon though.

Anyway, just a quick catch-up today...

Festive Finishing Touches

(Buy this set of stoneware stars here)

Making seasonal gift ideas in ceramics is a long term affair. You have to plan ahead otherwise time soon catches up with you. So this year I started making ceramic Christmas decorations back in the Summer. Normally I’m the type of person who really objects to Christmas decorations appearing anywhere and everywhere before December. But this year I feel strangely compelled to let my own little decorations loose into the world as soon as possible! So although December is still a week or so away, I thought I would blog a medley of photos of my handmade ceramic stars.

(Buy this set of ceramic stars here)

Each star has been handmade from stoneware clay and glazed on one side. The larger brown-fleck stars have been reduction fired in a gas kiln which has given them a lovely toasted appearance. The smaller white stars are fired in an electric kiln and glazed in a plain white glaze.

Finding the right details to finish off your creations is not always easy. I’ve strung the brown-fleck stars on a festive red ribbon with a simple bow which I think sets them off beautifully and has a rich warm quality. I wanted a more delicate, sparkly type of thread for the smaller white stars but finding the right one proved difficult. I made several disappointing trips to my local sewing shops in search of just the right texture and quality – but found nothing that fitted the bill. Then I suddenly remembered making cords out of strands of wool when I was a kid and realized I should make my own hand-twisted thread.

And here’s how I made it:

I chose a plain white cotton thread, a strong durable silver thread and a sparkly, flimsy gold thread, all of which were unsuitable on their own. Then I measured out a strand of each of these threads to a length about three times as long as I wanted the final cord to be. Then I held the ends of all three between my thumb and finger on my left hand as I twisted the other ends in my right, keeping them taut. When the cord was tightly twisted, I looped it over a nail or hook at the middle point and then lined up the two ends so they met. Then I lifted the cord off the hook. The tightly twisted cord quickly springs back on itself and the two sides twist together to form a thicker, stronger single cord. If you’ve never done this, then try it: it’s a clever little trick. The result in this case was a perfect sparkly thread that has proved far better than any I could have bought.

You just never know when childhood pastimes will come in handy.