I would like to thank everybody who stopped by my booth at the NAU Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair. It was a great couple of days! I really enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new people, getting great feedback on my ceramics and all of the new ideas for next year. I am really excited to get back into the studio!

Here are some pictures of my booth setup. I think the setup worked well. It was a large space (10×10). I kept the floor plan open and had pieces spread out throughout the space on the tables and the two wire racks. I also hung up a white background on the trellis behind the table after these pictures were taken, to reduce the visual busy-ness. (is that a word?)

The show was held in a gymnasium with a rubberized floor, so there wasn’t much I could do about the blue and yellow floor. I thought about putting backs on the wire racks but noticed that a lot of people came over to my booth after eyeballing the backs of the pots that were on the racks. So I’m glad I left the backs open. I borrowed the racks from a friend of mine who owns a garden center. They fold flat and are lightweight; I need to get some of those! They worked out perfectly for displaying pots.

If you stopped by and have any feedback on my booth setup, I would love to hear from you. I am new at arranging my work in this type of setting and am always open to suggestions!

Slab vases. The first was made with a creamy white stoneware and colored clay. The second, in textured white stoneware, glazed with a butterscotch shino glaze. Finished height on both about ten inches.

A nice-sized shallow bowl, perfect for serving pasta or any saucy dish. About ten and a half inches in diameter, an inch and a half deep:

Just emptied the kiln again. Got some nice stuff out of this firing. By far, my favorites are these two mugs, glazed with Coyote Light Blue Shino and Pam’s Blue. One is lined with a white glaze. I’ll definitely be making more of these! The pictures really don’t do the colors justice.

I am not going to take any professional-quality photos of my work until after the shows. No sense in setting up the light tent and taking pictures of pieces that might sell. Besides, there’s no time for photography right now. Must! Glaze! Pots!

I’m taking vacation hours from my day job this week to glaze and fire. I plan to fire the kiln two more times - on Saturday, and again on Monday, in preparation of the NAU Mountain Campus Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair.

I brought this kiln-load inside earlier and the pots are singing to me. Did you know that pots sing when they come out of the kiln? Well, they do. More on that in an upcoming post.

For now, it is time to Glaze!

Something potters strive for is consistency in glaze results. Once you have a formula and technique that works, you can move into production mode and not spend so much time messing around with mixing, applying and layering glazes.

With my current studio setup, I am limited to using commercial glazes. It has taken a long time, but I have found a combination that works for me, consistently. Consistency is the name of the game. I have learned how to layer the glazes for best effect, and how thick to apply them. I’ll be making a lot more pots decorated with these simple colors for the upcoming shows, and will leave experimenting for after the holidays.

This mug was glazed with two thick layers of Georgie’s Incredible Black, dipped in a thick application of Georgie’s Perfect White, then the remaining exposed black was given a light layer of Laguna WC520 Transparent glaze.

The combination makes for a wonderful array of subtle colors and patterns. I am still on the quest for lighter glazes, but in the meantime, this is a nice, more traditional addition to my colored slip work.