Monday, December 29, 2008

Welcome to our Studio!

It is nice to finally be set up and up and running in our new home.  Here is the studio we put together that I thought I would share what it is like.  Finally Dave and I have our own tables to work at (although I kind of hog them all!) in the same room - lol!  

This is where most of the mixing and conditioning of the claying is done.  Everything is right within reach -- just how I like it!



This is the baking and finishing area.



More of the finishing area and where all the beadwork is done.



These windows were specially designed for this room for a particular reason.  They provide the defused lighting needed for our photographs of our finished projects.  The corner quickly sets up as our own mini photograph studio.



Here is where we store and display our finished pieces.



This is my favorite furniture piece we bought from Ikea just for this room. It has a space under
the glass for storage and display.  I like to keep some of my clay tools, and pieces I'm working on so they are quick to see and easy to reach.  Because it is glass, I cannot operate the pasta machine on this so I use the first area shown (just a quick turn of my chair) but this gives me a lot of working space on large projects as I love to spread out!  Also, because it is glass, I can use my blades for cutting and it cleans up really well again afterwards.



We also use half of the area under the glass top to demonstrate the various stages in our cane making and other bead making techniques.  We have found that people appreciate the finished product much more when they actually see the process involved in the making of their jewelry piece.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Is that Prancer & Vixen??

Ahhh, no, just the mountain sheep that we discovered in our back yard when we woke up Christmas morning.  There was more than a dozen of them.  I would've liked to have gotten a little closer but didn't want to spook them -- they sure are graceful and amazing to see close up!

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Wishing you all A Merry Christmas & All the Best in the New Year!

Well, I spoke too soon about having a mild winter so far.  Looks like this will be the coldest and snowiest Christmas for all of Canada in 30 years. 

It took us a little longer than expected with this move and getting settled in our new home but so far we are really  enjoying living here in our new little town. 

We are still working on setting up our Etsy Shop -- I didn't realize how much work would be involved, such as taking proper photos and filling out all the necessary information. We are also working on some new designs and should have them posted within the next few days.

In the meantime, we just want to take a moment here and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!  God Bless.

Monday, December 8, 2008

We're back!

We are finally moved and settled into our new home.  Things got delayed and our house wasn't ready to move into yet so we ended up with a little more of an extended vacation.  I've been chomping at the bit to get at my clay again but fortunately I had plenty of other things to work on to keep my hands busy -- such as finishing off some pieces as well as doing some tweaking and revamping -- 

We now have an Etsy account -- just a matter of posting some items which may take a few more days with retaking some of the photos and all but should be up and running by next week -- right now catching up on some of our Christmas orders takes priority as they need to go out asap.

We are really enjoying our new home and so far the winter here has been fairly mild with not too much snow.  It is so nice to be in a more peaceful environment away from the city stress. Our new studio is almost set up --  Unfortunately it was the last room to get organized and had the most boxes to unpack!!  I will post photos of that sometime later for those of you who are curious to see.