Getting Down to Business.

This won’t be the most visually appealing blog post (have I even had many of those yet?), but I have to ‘get down to business’ and make some semi-important to some people announcements.

Firstly, and no matter where you’re located you can go ahead and get excited, I am having my second—and final—sale of the year.  I decided to jump onto the Black Friday and Cyber Monday bandwagon and have a little promotion of my own.  If you buy two or more pieces in my shop you are entitled to free worldwide shipping.  So, this is the perfect opportunity to pick up some gifts for the ladies in your life, or just for yourself—I don’t judge.  

Secondly, although I’ve nearly written off doing ‘the craft shows’ in Edinburgh after a trying first year, I will be participating in two more events before the year’s end.  The first is the Out of the Blue Drill Hall’s Xmas Arts Market on 3 December.  Details can be found here.  The second event is the Christmas Craft Fair at the Columcille Centre, Morningside 10 December from 11am-4pm.  I will be sharing a table(s) with other members of our shared pottery studio, so there will be plenty of ceramics to check out at both events!

And lastly, I will be flying to my home state, the wild and wonderful West Virginia, to enjoy the holidays (plus another month of freeloading) with my family and friends on 13 December.  I will remain there until 31 January!  I plan to keep my Etsy shop up and running for the majority of it, so expect to see prices in USD and any other relevant changes such as postage. This random WV picture was borrowed from here in my sorry attempt to make this somewhat attractive.

Sorry for the multiple blocks of scary text—I’ll be sure to put ‘make blog prettier’ somewhere on my laundry list of New Year’s resolutions…     

New Attitude and (More Importantly) New Porcelain

Well, as we’re nearing the end of October (really?  already?!) I’ve come to accept that warm weather is not in my near future and have since chosen to embrace the oncoming winter.  In a big way.   I mean I already sang a damn Christmas carol (Johnny Cash’s Christmas-y feeling, if that counts). 

So yesterday morning I posted an Etsy treasury with a ‘cosy’ theme to further entrench myself in the holiday spirit despite my inner voice shrieking, “It’s too early for that crap!”  Not that the items in the treasury are crap—au contraire!  (Nobody said that while I was living in Paris, by the way, and I was sad.  But then I ate a demi-baguette and forgot the whole thing.)  I especially love that print by caitlihne who also happens to be located in the UK.  

Along with welcoming winter with open arms, a big ol’ man sweater, and obscene amounts of coffee, I’ve welcomed some new porcelain into the studio.  And oh my, do I like it!  It is higher firing (1280º C) than the other porcelain I was using which is now considered ‘discontinued’…pretty much forever.  I love this new porcelain too much to go back—it’s a much brighter white but not a stark white.  I hope everyone else will be as smitten with it as I am, and I’ve just listed three new pieces demonstrating its beauty, so you all can now check it out!  More to come!

see it in the shop!

see it in the shop!

see them in the shop!

Stage One: Autumn Denial.

This is the time of year when I’m usually quite excited and welcoming of the change in season—autumn has always been my favourite with its own particular smell and light along with comfortable temperatures.  However, after spending my first summer here in Scotland, I’m feeling a little ripped off.  When did the summer happen?  Was I taking a nap when it came and missed it?  Did it forget to stop by and say hello to me?  

It’d be nice to have the strength to simply accept that summer’s gone never to return until next year and avoid complaining for the sake of my blog.  But I don’t wanna!  [stamps feet like child]  I’m going to have a nice whine and post a couple pictures from a trip to Nice, France back in 2009 instead!  Now where did I put that time machine?

It's Alive!

Oh boy…I think I saw it twitch.  Nope.  It’s definitely dead.  Oh well, time to revive it.  What shall I use?  Something relevant to my work/life?  N to the O.  I’m-a use a squirrel.

Bam!  There.  Now that my blog is officially back from the grave with the generous help of Mr. Squirrel, I can apologise.  I'm sorry for abandoning my blog for the entire summer (if you can call it that here in Edinburgh anyway), but with a squirrel like that out your window, is it really possible to get much else done other than admiring all of that damn cuteness?  Excuses, excuses.

I understand that there’s been no bated breath surrounding the return of this blog, but I feel better if I just say the old ‘I’m sorry’ bit so I can move forward with fresh intentions.  I do that a lot on here though.  Maybe I’m noticing a trend…

I pretty much neglected to post anything on my spring/summer collection 2011, and now we’re already into autumn/winter!  Time is really flying!  And I do have some news:  the. big. kiln. is. operational.  So I can finally begin firing actual ceramics in the more classical sense. 

Only the smaller scale pieces will become available online soon, and we’ll see as far as adding larger vases and such in the future.  Also, I will be shipping a small collection of work in a couple of weeks to a lovely shop in Portland, Oregon, Sword + Fern!  The owner, Emily, is an absolute gem and fellow jewellery artist who writes a fantastic (and frequently updated!) blog here. 

So if, by any chance, anyone is in the Portland area, definitely check it out—I wish I could!

Preview!

Here’s a little glimpse into an upcoming line featuring precious and semi-precious stones.  They’re just so gorgeous I couldn’t resist posting a couple photos and giving everyone a heads up as to what is on the way!  I’m very excited to be incorporating natural stones into my jewellery again as that is where I first began.  I love working with them, admiring them…shopping for them.  Okay.  I love shopping.  It’s come out. 

I feel better now.   Lots of pretties coming soon! 

Cake or death?

I chose cake, and if you’re not familiar with the Eddie Izzard-ism then shame on you.  I’d go through the whole, “I’m sorry I’ve been too busy to blog” spiel, but with a huge image of cake in your face you'd probably ignore it anyway and scan the rest of this for the word “cake” and maybe “recipe” if so inclined.  I have been too busy to blog though, honest.  Just not too busy to make that cake.  There is always just enough time to make cake and then, of course, devour it in a blind, unthinking fury. 

You’ll be happy to know then that the CAKE is EASY to make and even easier to eat.  You might even have everything you need on hand.  I almost did myself—just lacked the double cream and cocoa powder. 

The recipe is for an American mayonnaise cake which is very dense and moist with no need for eggs or oil (and can easily go vegan)!  I didn’t mess around with the ingredients much (or bother to figure out the conversions, sorry!) just added instant coffee to enhance the dark chocolate flavour.  And here's where it gets decadent—I made chocolate ganache for the topping.  It’s so simple and took this cake from great to incredible. 

You can thank me later.  Or slap me.  Maybe both.

New Shop!

I have a lot of stuff.  Nobody mentioned that if you get into making jewellery that you somehow morph into a super power hoarder and will accumulate towering mounds of jewellery components and findings in five minutes flat.  That’s what happened to me.  In five minutes flat. 

                    

So, in order to allow myself to continue onto my next jewellery endeavor, (i.e., porcelain jewellery) and feel good about it, I had to make sure that I didn’t let all of those fine items sit in various storage bins for years.  I decided that a new Etsy shop would be the remedy.  I know a million people have their reservations about opening two shops on Etsy—I did the research, one million even.  But I just sort of shrugged and got to work on it straight away.

So, here she be!  The new sister shop to clā contemporary, clāSTOK.  clāSTOK will pretty much feature all items created from surplus stock at a ridiculously low price.  Seriously—it’s low!  As in every piece costs under £15 with most under £10.  No joke.  You can't possibly still be reading this...go!  Check it out! 

I'm a lot pushier in writing.