Pottery

I've decided to sell some of the pottery that I made in school while living in Seattle. Here are the pictures I've taken of the first few pieces I want to sell:


Squiggle Bowl (the figure eights are pieces of clay fused inside the bowl).



Bud Vase glazed in Frosted Blue with black velour underglaze



Small bowl with Swirl. This is glazed with Cola Green glaze and covered with Sunset Pink glaze.

The outside of the bowl. Cool, huh?

Small bowl with question marks inside. One of my favourite punctuation marks!

Small blue bowl. I think it's glazed with Medium Blue underglaze then covered in clear glaze

These marks were made at the trimming stage. I don't think it was completely centred on the wheel and so the trimming tool jumped and bumped along the surface.

Another small bowl; this one glazed Glacier Blue on the inside and matte black on the outside.

As you can see, all of these pieces are smallish (some have quarters in the pic to show you the scale).

Glitter Rock, Year of the Rabbit and Aries!

I decided to try something new with my resin pieces....glitter! I think the fabric disks that I use are much easier to deal with and more controllable but the glitter looks really cool! Let me show you:

Here are the pieces as they cure in the mold.

I call this piece "Glitter Rock"

A charging ram to represent the Aries astrological sign (inspired by my husband the Aries!)

This is my favourite piece. To commemorate the Chinese Lunar Year of the Rabbit I embedded a metal charm of a rabbit and gave it a background of red glitter, the traditional colour used for Chinese New Year celebrations.

I haven't sanded them yet so they're still literally rough around the edges but I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out! Once they're sanded and have a magnet attached they'll be going into my Etsy shop.

Saturday Morning

Well, as it turns out, I'm starting my morning by pouring resin. I started it yesterday at around noon but thought that this time I'd let it sit longer before embedding the charms. This meant that I was contemplating pouring the next layer of resin at about 7:30 last night. I knew my husband was going to be home soon and I didn't want him to have to deal with the smell so I held off.

Even though the package of this particular resin says "Low Odour" it still has enough of a smell to give me a headache! So much so that I have to leave the apartment for a while. This morning I went to Starbucks and sat and read the paper while drinking a mocha. I'm looking forward to our upcoming move to the East end, not just because it's to a nice apartment but that there's no Starbucks in sight in our new neighbourhood! There's a Tim Horton's that's about a 10-minute walk away. Here, the Starbucks is a mere 2-minute walk away.

So not only will I be drinking less expensive, less-caloric coffee but I'll be getting a decent walk in just by going there!

Toronto is in the middle of its epic rainfall and I really don't feel like going out for a walk. I'm currently taking a jewellery-making course through the Toronto District School Board and I'd love to be able to work on my bezel setting but I don't have a jewellery studio to work out of. The class is only once a week for 3 hours but I enjoy every minute of it. By the way, a bezel setting is this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGgUbMK_O-0gOmEf8_ZFV4Vk52wtifINeHgvkSOWLPh8KQcbIZkmLfR_fKbFGfx1MUnbGj9eLUObx8x_Rtc1Fv638_GyuSibUn3RMJauuP9HNWH2QVTI11vxESf4CycaXc1OyPTOxIH85/s1600/Bezel-Setting-Tutorial.jpg

That's an example. It can be a ring (in this case), a pendant (in the case of the one I'm making), a bracelet, a brooch or any other piece of jewellery you can think of! My goal is to make bezels for all my beautiful pieces of beach glass as well as for the great gemstones we bought in Tucson at the Gem and Mineral Show.

New to This Blogging Thing!

Hi and welcome to my very first blog post! After months of toying with the idea I finally took the plunge and created a blog to act as a companion to my Etsy shop which is called Kim Made.

I've had the shop for over a year now (maybe even 2?) but only put items in there sporadically. I'm hoping this blog plus having the shop will spur me on to make more things and put them up for sale.

What things? Well, for the last 5 1/2 years my husband and I lived in Seattle, WA. I have a disability so I was the homemaker. This meant I stayed at home, quite a lot, actually, and started going nuts with boredom. That's when I began crafting. I had taught myself to knit a few years before living in Seattle so I did more of that. Here's an example:

 I also went on craftster.org all the time to pick up new techniques and crafting ideas.

I took a couple of mini-classes (4-hour classes) at a local Seattle art school (Pratt): one in jewellery-making (although they called it "jewelry") and one in fused glass, both of which I loved and vow to do more of! I took a pottery class as well, at the Pottery School at Pioneer Square (Hi Erik!)

I also found a Continuing Education pottery class at South Seattle Community College and this is where I was able to totally focus my life around pottery-making! It was the best! Any student enrolled in one of their courses could come into the studio anytime there wasn't a class and make stuff! The studio was spacious and part of my disability is balance issues related to the space around me. I need a lot of it! The studio was great for me and I felt calm there. I just started to get good mere months before we left Seattle and unfortunately I haven't found a pottery studio here in T.O (or El Toro, as Eye Magazine has dubbed our fair city!) that will let me spend so much time making pots.

Ah well, soon come, right? I'll keep looking.

Here are some examples of pots I'm particularly proud of:

Meanwhile, I'm taking another jewellery course here in Toronto. I'm not sure how I feel about soldering with a torch but I'm really looking forward to making a bezel-setting for one of the gems that we got at the Gem and Mineral Show in Tucson, AZ many years ago.

About a month ago I took a course through the Toronto Business Development Centre on how to start a small business. I decided I wanted to make crafts for a living.

My first formal batch of resin fridge magnets has come out of the molds and I've posted 8 of them here:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/Hippie9?ga_search_query=Hippie9&ga_search_type=seller_usernames

Feel free to let me know what you think!