Vintage Lace Designs

Our friend Linda was helping with the clay this past month, when she was able to.  She has been in a lot of pain waiting for her hip replacement surgery and she found that playing with the clay was very therapeutic and helped keep her mind off things.  Fortunately her surgery is tomorrow (Friday) and we wish her well with our thoughts and prayers.

These past couple of months with her helping has been a lot of fun and a real blessing!  I first taught her how to condition clay and then to mix up my color recipes.  I had several large bins of scrap clay and she had a ball going through each bin, sorting into piles and then mixing them up to create some new colors.

We were discussing what to do with some of it and I happened to mention to her about the air dry clay and ceramic dishes I had seen online made by texturing with lace doilies.  I have been wanting to try that with the polymer for some time now.  Linda was quite excited about the idea and the next day she came over with a bag full of old vintage doilies!  We started experimenting with them and these were a few of the first ones we made (not finished off yet). 

And this is one that I just finished off the other day.  You can see in the photos how large they really are.

We were wondering what else we could create with the lace and I thought switch plate covers could be cool.  We had fun figuring out various designs to see which ones we liked the best.

Some of these items will be going into the Shuswap Artisan Market in Sorrento this Saturday.  It is Canada Day and Dave and I will be there with all of our special Canada 150 themed pieces to celebrate this big event.  If you are in the area, come on in and see us!

New Dishes Created

I love creating larger items that are functional but finding the time is always an issue.  I finally found some creative play time and decided to make some new dishes.  I discovered that once I started, it got my creative juices flowing and now I have more ideas.

Making items like these require more patience and take a little more time as they generally go through at least 2 bakings but the end product is so worth it!  All of these pieces went to the Shuswap Artisan Market in Sorrento and are already sold so we dropped off a few more pieces today.

Brilliant Rainbow Swirl Dish

Brilliant Rainbow Swirl Dish - Side view

Green Leaves with Lady Bugs Soap or Trinket Dish

Green Leaves with Lady Bugs Soap or Trinket Dish - Side view

Gigantic Bloom Dish in Pink and Lime

Flower Dish in Teal and Lime

Leaf Jewelry Dishes

One day while I was making our gigantic leaf buttons I happened to cut a cane slice a little too thick which made my leaf a little larger than I wanted.  A thought then occurred to me that perhaps I could make it even larger to create a decorative dish. I was quite excited with the results and immediately made some more.

These will be for sale at the gift shop in the Shuswap Lake Fesitval of the Arts that opens to the public tomorrow.

Dave and I will be attending the artists' reception tonight and then return there again in the morning as Dave will be doing a volunteer shift in the gift shop while I do a live demo at the juried part of the show upstairs.  Each artist that participates must take at least one shift to help out during the 8 days.  We always look forward to working with the other fellow artists and renewing friendships again.

Forget-Me-Nots

I made some small dishes to go along with our flower theme this summer.  Dave came up with the name  "Forget-Me-Nots" which I really like!  They are perfect for keeping a ring or other odd jewelry pieces handy and I made them in an assortment of colors.  Of course I had to add my little lady bugs for that finishing touch.