Enjoying the Spring flowers these days.
Still gray & chilly outside, but with a lot of beautiful colors popping up all over the neighborhood… and on my back porch!

With my soda kiln firing scheduled for next weekend, I’m in the final throws of studio production. Making enough to fill the kiln… and replenishing my inventory for the upcoming art fair season! Just another batch of wall pocket vases stamped, slipped & drying!

After a bit of stamping, these discs are getting so much closer… closer to becoming my latest batch of ikebana flower vases! Spring flowers will be here soon… and they’re going to need a home!

A FULL CIRCLE MOMENT!!!
Here’s a great story… follow along…

So I made some plain vases for my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class for their Glazing Challenge. I had an extra one, so my friend & fellow teacher Chelsea glazed it during the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. It came out beautiful. And then Chelsea gifted it to Clara for her birthday… and Clara is in my THROWDOWN class. So what started in THROWDOWN is now back for good with a THROWDOWN for good!

Happy Birthday Clara!!!

Last session, my friend & fellow teacher Chelsea was doing a class on different glazing techniques. And I “just happened” to have this large un-stamped & un-glazed vase on my teacher’s shelf… leftover from my Surface Decoration class almost a year ago! Good intentions for a good demo… but I never quite got around to it in class… don’t judge!

So I offered it up for Chelsea to play with as one of her class demos! Everyone knows that glazing is my least favorite step of the process… so if someone else volunteers, I’m all in! And she did an amazing job with several different glazes & techniques all playing well together! Thanks Chelsea… you can glaze more of my stuff any time!!!

Feels great to be getting back into “production mode”…
starting off with some smaller vases with some smaller stamps!
Gotta start somewhere, right???

So I’ve been trying to grow some of my own bittersweet over the past few years. First on a trellis in my back yard…. err, cement courtyard in a large pot. A few years later I moved it to my front yard garden to grow up a street lamp. I’ve always gotten pretty good leaves… but this year was the first time I’ve ever found the flowers & berries on my plant! Very exciting… as it’s completely growing up & taking over the lamp post!!!

Sadly, I think this is the finally blossom off my dahlia plant. You can tell by the number of posts I’ve done about these dahlias, that I’m kind of enamored by them. I love how the petals start yellow and turn to this coral red color as they mature. It was my first summer growing dahlias… methinks I need to plant more colors & more varieties next summer!!! More is more!!!

A quick batch of medium vases…
stamped & painted with colored flashing slips for my next soda kiln!

A cutie-patootie vase perfect for a cutting of lantana flowers…
with a cute-patootie cat keeping watch. Thanks for the photos Kristy!