Shop Up-date and a SALE!

My shop has a fresh new look along with some new photos from the mini-photography session I had with Vancouver Photographer Byron Dauncey last week!  I have been working on new vase forms and new designs off and on all spring, and was hoping to do a complete website over-haul along with a formal photography shoot and road-blocks just kept coming up with the timing on it all.  So I'm happy to report that there is always a way out of every timing mess- a mini-shoot, a new webshop design (courtesy of BigCartel) and it's all looking pretty good for the summer, if you ask me!

Please head over and check out the new work!  I keep seeing such lovely bouquets at farmer's markets or just on my walks in people's gardens so I'm offering a 15% discount on all the vases in my shop from now until August 15th!  Please use the code SummerSale for the discount- all the vases listed are ready to ship, with many of them being one-of-a-kind and in limited quantities!

The wonderful world of colour

I'm a big fan of colour grouping and pairing.  In painting class my favourite thing was colour theory class where we would place colours side by side and see what would happen.  Does the colour recede or come forward?  Does it change it's tone depending on what's beside it? With that in mind, we had a little fun at my last photo-shoot with grouping my striped bottle vases together.  Putting all the Turquoise shades together, the cool colours, the bright colours, the summer colours.  It was kind of fun.
As many glazes as I have in the studio these days there are some new colours I want to work on this year.  Thankfully I seem to have the colour of the year already working for me: Tangerine Tango, a great bright orange (the orange stripes in the photo above) with red undertones.  This year, I'd like to delve into the greens a bit more.  Finding a good 'Kelly Green' stain is hard to come by, but I'm looking forward to trying.  I think I've got yellow down, my turquoise selection is quite extensive, along with the blues.  I'm not a big purple and pink fan, but perhaps I need to work on that a little more- you know, broaden my horizons a bit.  (Wouldn't a soft purple look good with the vases below?)

What colours would you like to see me use next? Any suggestions?
photos by Curtis Hildebrand

A quick preview

I pulled out my first kiln-load and quickly shot these photos on a dark day in the studio, but here's a sample of the work I had been glazing last week.  The tall striped vases didn't make it into this kiln firing, save one, but I've got some new work coming out of the kiln later this week and then more by Saturday of the Eastside Culture Crawl.  It's a bit of a scramble this year to feel like I'm going to have enough work for my 2 shows.  The emails of special orders and reserving work have started and I've already sold out of the short striped mugs I had made for this weekend.   

I had been really excited about trying different glazes as the 'backdrop' of my pots but I'm not as keen on it as I thought.  There are some things I like about it- I like the way the yellow and turquoise triangles play with each other, and thought it was a no-brainer to include a few little white triangles in the mix, but really regretted it when I pulled it out of the kiln.  On the other hand, the white mug with the greeny/grey triangles with hits of yellow, feels much more successful although I think it could be fun to play around with the colours.  Some of the edges between the glazes got a bit fuzzy and not so straight, partly due to the glazes I used.  I'm also not quite convinced about the reverse bottle vases.  I have now tried the turquoise, saffron and grey (which was a complete flop).  Maybe next time I'll try to pair glaze colours together...

Recent Uploads

Some recent i-phone uploads for you.  The orange Vespa is in constant need of repair, but it looks oh so cool.  The kitty is well loved and is enjoying the outdoors now that the weather is better.  And coffee with a friend does wonders!
Anyways, I hope you have a wonderful long weekend!  If you are passing through the Airport, I just dropped off a bunch of work! And the up-date on the Anthropologie Store (great post on decor8 with photos on the new shop) was that my vases are selling quickly! Thank you Vancouver for such a warm response!  I also just dropped off more striped bottle vases down at Room6 in Deep Cove.  Megan is just about to launch her new website- can't wait to check it out!

The big news!

My order for the new Anthropologie store opening here in Vancouver is almost finished!  To be on their website soon!!

Stripe Bottle Colour Wheel!

I'm ready for Spring! Are you?

This is the result of last week's epic glaze session!  Seriously fun.  So much work.  And so rewarding!  I mean, just look at them all.  I mixed up countless stains with 3 different base recipes and most of them turned out as I had hoped.  I was a bit disappointed with how much the pink stain burned out in the nearly white on white vase.  And the bright orange- wowza!  Seriously bright. Might need to tone it down a bit.  Although maybe it's not so bad after all.  Goodness knows we all need a little colour at this time of year!  Jan from Poppytalk had emailed me about something this weekend so she got a hold of the colour-wheel  image for the front cover of the Poppytalk Handmade Lookbook.  Super fun!