Celebrating EARTH DAY with a bunch of little green sprouts in my dining room window! Lots of zinnia seedlings… looks like I might need to do some thinning out before they get too big?! And some dahlia sprouts in the larger containers. Can’t wait for warmer weather & warmer nights so I can get these planted outside so they can really start to flourish! Hoping for some great flowers in the front yard gardens this summer!

Celebrating a little bit of EARTH DAY today with admiration & appreciation of the beautiful Spring flowers along the bike trail this morning. Crab apple blossoms to start your Saturday… and your Earth Day! So go outside… and see something beautiful in nature!

A clouded start to another morning along the lakefront. There was some good sunrise potential… and yet the sun never quite made it through the clouds. As there was a thick layer hovering low on the horizon, and another large band moving in. Some good clouded views & reflections… but we never really got the colorful clouds I was hoping for.

Looks like a yummy evening dinner at Rosene’s…
with juicy ham served on a stamped & soda-fired plate!

And then last night after “stamping”… we continued on to “sprigging.” Kind of the opposite of stamping in a weird sort of way. Basically it’s pressing clay into a textured mold, and then popping out a little “medallion” of clay to score & slip and attach to the bowl. So the sprigs kind of turn into “inverted-stamps” creating a fun texture pattern wherever you choose to place them. All from one little handmade sprig mold… and more fun for my SURFACE DECORATION class last night!

And then after using MY stamps all night… I taught my SURFACE DECORATION class how to make their own! So now that’ll be able to go even further in their own personal stamping journeys!!! Handmade clay stamps for the win!!!

And boy did they have fun!!! Lots of groovy stamping going on last night in my SURFACE DECORATION class. Always fun to see how they can release their creativity & create such different patterns & designs using MY stamps… instead of trying to “copy” my stamping style!!! In the end they all made their very own stamped MASTERPIECES!!!

Last night in my SURFACE DECORATION class we all tackled stamping as their technique-du-jour! Not only did I bring down my pre-made bowls for them to play with… but I also brought some of my own handmade stamps! So we talked about some fun stamping techniques… and then I set them loose to do their own stamping!!!

Sometimes you just need to celebrate making it to the end of another work week…

For tonight’s SURFACE DECORATION class we’re tackling stamping & sprigs! Shocker, right? I mean… it was bound to happen at some point!

And I figured it would be a lot more “fun” for them if they had a blank surface to play with in class tonight. Can’t wait to see what they do with these plain bowls?!