Everyday Crafty Goodness

The ceramics class I’m in this semester is called “The Story Behind the Naked Clay” and we’re exploring visual narratives with clay.  We’ve been doing naked raku firings in class for the past few weeks and here’s my try at a narrative on a tile.

This is a drawing of the bedroom my sister and I shared with my grandmother when we were little and living with our grandparents in Taiwan.  My grandmother slept on the bed on the left, my sister slept in the middle, and I slept on the right.  My side of the bed actually butted up right against the wall but I’m not sure why I didn’t draw it that way.  The tile was dipped in slip and glaze and the drawing lines were scratched with a needle tool.  Smoke produced by saw dust at the end of the firing makes the lines black.  The finer crackle lines and dots were made by the crackle glaze.  You dunk the pieces into water after the firing and the slip and glaze are scraped off leaving just the bare clay piece with the smoked lines.  It’s a very cool process for those who like to play with fire (me!) and you get to see the results of the firing in just a few hours. 

This is what I did last night … 22 soap dishes glazed and ready to be fired this weekend!  I remember when I glazed for the very first time in college, I was confused to see that the celadon glaze (a pale green glaze after it’s been fired) is actually pink in liquid form (like the 2 pink ones toward the end of the table).  So these will look quite different when they come out of the kiln on Monday.

A woman at the studio was SHOCKED to see that I’ve been making my soap dishes because I normally don’t start making stuff until a month before the Show and Sale.   I told her that I will be selling these on Etsy so I’ve been going to the studio and making things on a regular basis.

So hopefully around the middle of April, I will have enough soaps and dishes to sell on Etsy.  Before then, I’ll try to list some of my vintage stuff on there for practice.

I took the soaps out of the molds last night.  I’m going to let these hang out for a day or two before I cut them.  The one on the right is the scrubby version with ground lavender and blue cornmeal and the specks you see are the ground lavender flowers.  These smell so good!

Woohoo, I finally made some soap this weekend!  I’ve been going to the studio for the past 3 weekends to make soap dishes but I have been really dragging my feet on the soapmaking.  This is a shot of cold process soap at trace, right before it gets poured into the molds.  This batch is called “Lavender Sunrise” with essential oils of lavender, lime, and tea tree.  It’s one of my most popular soaps.  The little dish near the top left of the kettle is a mixture of ground lavender and blue cornmeal I put in for the scrubby version of the soap. 

Last night’s jia jian mien (a Chinese noodle sauce traditionally made with pork and chili bean sauce but I made it with ground turkey, chili bean sauce, spaghetti sauce, and shredded carrots) … would’ve been today’s lunch if I hadn’t left it on the counter this morning!  Arrrgghhh!!!!!

I’ve been cooking more and bringing my lunch to work for the past 3 months or so.  I also started eating breakfast on a daily basis and as a result I lost 5 pounds (I wasn’t trying to lose weight on purpose).  I didn’t change my exercise routine (which consists of walking the dog and that’s about it) and I still eat until I’m full so the weight loss is really from NOT buying breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria and ordering Chinese and pizza once or twice a week for dinner.  So there Hollywood, this is the secret to losing weight … cook your own damn meals!

Anyway, this noodle dish is one of my favorite dishes to make and the sauce freezes well.  Damn it, I really wish I hadn’t left my lunch at home…