Flickr Favorites

1. Summer 2O1O - Explored, 2. eggs of many colors,

3. lene marlin:sitting down here, 4. fortune

My search word for this weeks Flickr favorites was 'focus'. I have added so many amazing images to my favorites as a reminder I should focus a bit more. I've been busy with lots of different things lately and that always brings me out of balance a bit.
And did I ever tell you I love to look at fortune cookie messages? I especially love the message in the picture above 'Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It's your destiny'.

Next Tuesday is the first Tuesday of the month so we play by theme if you like.
Stephanie provided the theme for next week and suggested to make a mosaic around
'something you're afraid of'. I love it & I can't wait to see what you'll come up with! :)
Do you have a fun theme for next month? Don't hesitate to let me know!

Wedding cake toppers

A while ago, I got a request from Kristi. She asked me if I remembered her as it was not the first time that Kristi contacted me. Kristi submitted my work to notcot.org when the '99 feelings' were first released and it made for big time visitors to my blog. She asked me if I could make a set of wedding cake toppers for her upcoming wedding.

Please meet Cyril & Kristi... ...cool pair hey?

New stamp

Whoohoo, I got my new stamp the other day & I love it.
It's made by Karen & she did a terrific job!I used to put stickers on my boxes but really, nothing beats a handmade stamp, does it?
The first box with the new stamp is on it's way.
Karen designs your stamp as you wish so you can get your own too.
She's lightening fast and supersweet on top of that! You can find more of her designs in her blog which is written in Dutch but the images speak for themselves and there's a 'translate' button on there too.

Happy weekend, everyone!
X
Mitsy

Merry go round

Every last friday of the month, I jump on the 'Merry go round'. What is the Merry go round exactly? Each month, a group of craftswomen from around the world join together and give their reponses to the same question/challenge.
Last month, we all posted a picture that affected us in one way or the other and explained a bit why. This month, Ruth assigned us to someone else on the Merry go round to make something being inspired by someone else's photo. I got assigned to Mariana's picture of little Seba with his binoculars in Patagonia. The end of the world and he can see all of it from there...Having travelled a lot myself over the years, I really enjoyed seeing Seba being encouraged by his parents to explore the world. Ovbiously he has an advantage to many other kids as he's being raised in 3 languages so he'll be sure to get around the world without language problems.
So I made him a little tag to put on his backpack...
Happy travels, Seba! :)

Want to know more about what inspiration the other Merriers chose to share with you? Hop over to their blogs. Please bear in mind that the members will be posting at different times of the day, depending on which world time-zone they are in :)

Laura at Blue Terracotta
Monika at Red2White
Ruth at Birdland Creations
Kim at Vilt a la Kim
Sara at Crafts of Texture
Samantha at Vintage is for lovers
Mariana at Florcita
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent
Jen at Painted Fish Studio
Bethany at Dirksen Dabbles

Fresh out of the kiln...

... and already in the jars at the Fashion Museum.
I also added some samples of new glazes and flowers for magnets and rings.

Anna's worktable

Today, Anna from LilaRubyKing is treating us with some work in progress. I don't know anything about working with silver and metalsmithing is such a mystery to me.
It seems all so complicated: sawing, soldering, dapping, doming, using a mandral,... All these tools are unneccesary in ceramics as we can form the clay anyway we like - easy!
For some reason, metal and glass are materials I'm not attracted too to work with since they seem so much more difficult to give shape. I would be really frustrated trying to manipulate a material that is so laborious & stubborn. So glad that Anna is working her magic with the metal.
The little bear head is porcelain which I slipcasted from a handmade mould.
The result of the work above can be found in her shop... :)

Flickr Favorites

1. Nina Ma'am, 2. sheer laughter, 3. The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. -e.e. cummings, 4. I wanna be laughed at, laughed with, just because

I love to laugh & I love seeing people laugh too. I usually can't help myself and start smiling and most probably laughing along too. I love how when you try to take a picture from people laughing , the image usually is a bit out of focus. It nails perfectly the feeling of having a roaring laugh and being a bit 'off ' this world. Laughing is like a drug to me: it's a neccesity & I get the most energy out of lots and lots and lots of it.

Preparing

Yesterday, I prepped things to take to the Fashion museum at the end of this week. All of these things will be sold in the museum shop and the happy girls are a big time favorite there so I made loads of 'em.
Thank you for voting on the tags. I love the lime a lot but since these will be put up for sale, I thought a more neutral one would fit better so I went with what most people said: hemp twine.
And then I had to come up with packaging for the buttons. I glazed 'em all transparant and thought that a kraftpaper packaging would look nice.
I cut out A4 sized kraftpaper and printed a tekst on them & drew a frame around it. The tekst says 'LACE' (porcelain) as the buttons do look a bit like lace but they are pretty porcelain...And now I'll have to glaze a whole batch of colorful buttons so that I can fire the kiln & deliver the goodies soon.

Handmade tags

You can click on the pictures to see 'em bigger. Thanks for your vote! :)

Time wasting experiment

Sometimes I bump into a shop on Etsy where I just have to see every listing...
Provax is one of those shops:
And when looking into her profile I see there was an interesting feature about her work in Etsy's blog which I completely missed at the time but glad I found it now.


Great stuff hey?

Happy weekend, everyone!
X
Mitsy

PS: The porcelain rings came out of the kiln well - some of them are slightly deformed but not in a disturbing kind of way. Will show a picture soon although it won't be the end product yet...

Sizing

Testing the sizing of the rings. It's hard to determine the size as the porcelain will schrink quite a bit during firing. I'll be opening the porcelain kiln later tonight & I can't wait to see the results of these.

Flickr Favorites

1. 105/365, 2. Untitled, 3. today, 4. bottled.

I'm not an obsessive kind of collector but I love to keep bits and bobs that I pick up here and there. Mainly these are things from nature: shells, leaves, pebbles, sticks,...
Apart from that, I keep things in jars. I have a hard time to throw away glass jars, they get a second life in our house. I keep stuff in them. Wooden balls, buttons, yarn, matchboxes, beads, lace,... It helps me organise all the things I just can't throw away as I'm convinced that all of it will come in handy one day.
Are you a collector? What do you collect? Do you use jars? And what do you put in them? Ohh, I'm so curious! :)

Making

Making a new batch of buttons for the Fashion museumshop in Hasselt.
A time consuming but very Zen process...
The new exhibition 'Prints' opens on June 25th.

Crispy light

Hilde from Blue Celeste asked me to make something for her but when she told me what it was I told her to do it herself as it's a very time consuming job.
Haha, I'm cruel that way.
So I showed her how to do it and the other day, the work was delivered in my studio. She did an amazing job - the work is so fine, so delicate and so perfect. I couldn't have done it any better.
It's super super thin paper porcelain & it will be crispy white and pretty.
She's definately up to something with these and I can't wait to see the end result. I doubt she'll be producing these on a frequent basis though. It will be one special & very unique piece of art.
While at it, I decided to drench a few layers of round tissue papers into casting porcelain to see the difference in thinness and translucency. A few years ago, I have done this before in this work but I forgot about it when she asked me about making the rounds. They will for sure be more fragile I'm afraid.Did you know that Hilde has an Etsy shop too? She works magic with leather and Japanese paper.

Wishing you all a crispy light weekend!
x
Mitsy

Flickr Favorites

1. Untitled, 2. Cherry Blossom Picnic 2011,

3. summer garden party, 4. Vintage Picnic 6

It's the first Tuesday of the month so we play by theme if you like. Minna from Karuski provided the theme for this month: garden party! Thank you, Minna!
Do you have a fun theme for next month? Don't hesitate to let me know!

When I think garden party, I automatically think 'picnic'. Picnic's are great for several reasons, but the best one is that you don't have to worry about prepping food, getting drinks and making sure everyone is entertained. You can just enjoy the entire thing from the start as all is prepared and there is no pressure involved.
Can't wait to drop by your garden party!

Dilemma

While working on a new collaboration line with Anna (LilaRubyKing), we sometimes face difficult decisions. Pondering between A & B and both being very indecisive, we turn to you to hear your opinion.

So, we're making new jewellery pieces and to be more precise: rings, earrings, brooches & pendants. All porcelain and that's were we need your opinion.
Do you prefer glazed or unglazed pieces for jewellery?

Glazed ware has no maintenance while natural pieces of porcelain might get a bit dirty when wearing. However it can be cleaned easily with a soft brush and luke warm soapy water. It will look as pretty and white as before and keep it's natural touch.

Below is a sample of partly glazed (right) and partly unglazed (left) ware. Perhaps it's hard for you to imagine without feeling it but if you do have an opinion, we'd love to hear it.
Thanks so much for your co-operation.

Thought provoking

Thought provoking work that is blowing me away...

Boxed online

A while ago, I was asked to participate in a new on line market that focusses on the Middle East: Boxed online
I didn't have to think long about this as it's not a region that I ship to often and somehow I always get giddy when I do. Don't ask me why, I just do.

Besides that, the founder, Sarah Saleh is such a sweet and enthusiast personality. She is providing a platform to support independent designers from around the globe, and offers a hand to all artisans working in developing countries to help sustain their livelihoods and increase their earnings. You can read more about it here!
And don't forget to check out the blog, follow boxed online on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.
Talk about boxes... Did you know that I recycle my boxes? I used to buy 'em but I found a flower shop that is drowning in boxes and they are really happy if I come around to take some away. I remove all of the stickers and apply mine.
I hope that soon I will be able to put one of the 'Boxed' stickers on them...

Work in progress

Things I'm working on right now.
Most of it is paper porcelain and it's for my new collaboration work with Anna from LilaRubyKing. We've been e-mailing back and forth nearly every day for a while now and things are really coming together. I'm so excited about this new line...
Hope to show some more soon! :)