So one of my final projects for my pottery class last year was to handbuild a tea-set. Yeesh. One of my most labour-intensive, frustrating projects of the whole year. They're made from red bakers clay because I lovelovelove red clay, be it only for the colour. Little did I know how darn finicky it was...gahh.

And the set had to be themed, so I decided to make a cute little town with mine.



So I made three teacups, a creamer (that...looks like a gravy boat...shh.) and a sugar bowl, along with two saucers. As you can see, the set looks quite cute there in the grass.



Detail shots of the sugar-house (my favourite piece) and the gravy boat CREAMER, as well.



And this is probably the cutest teacup on earth. It's...simply adorable. The picture really does it no justice. My camera decided to make it all orangey. The colours are actually green and purple.



The insides of the teacups. I love them together.



And this is one of the saucers. The other one kind of failed, because someone mixed up the glaze colours and instead of a nice forest-green, I got an ugly rust colour. -.-

And you may be wondering, where on earth is the teapot?! Well the teapot is...hanging around. It /was/ my favourite piece before the roof above where our pottery pieces were drying out happened to leak, right onto my unfired piece. And it melted. So I had to redo it, angrily, and it somehow cracked. So I'm...taking a teapot hiatus for the time being. And hopefully I'll stubbornly finish that blasted thing. (when I do, I'll put pictures of it up here, as well)

Awh thanks so much you guys. :3 I appreciate the love tons. I'm tempted to make more of these little books now...

It's kind of like that. It's really kind of a backwards concept of colouring. You take a piece of Styrofoam and cut out what you want white (or whatever colour the paper you're printing on is) and then cover it in a different colour (So...purple.) Then you take the piece and carve out what you want to stay purple, and print a different colour over top of your first colour. And you just...keep layering the colours.

You can get some really cool effects from it, although the styrofoam can be a pain to cut into sometimes. =P I'll probably get a tutorial up here at some point in time, once I get access to some more printing ink, if you want to see it in action.

Awh thanks gals. I appreciate the love. <3

Yeahh. Crows are just...awesome. xD And Ravens, but I dunno. Crows seem cooler...be it just for the name. *could never tell them apart, really...*

And yep. I had to print like...five wings on other pieces of paper. But that one was mu favourite. lol The swirls are ADDICTING. It's like...it's horrible. I feel almost ashamed of myself...save for the fact that they look fabulous on...everything. >.>

Question..... would anyone mind if I extended the signups until friday? I have to write a quiz tomorrow, drive my sister back home on thursday, and there is one other person waiting for feedback (from me) for another swap. It also gives anyone on the fence a couple extra days to decide! We are already way more people than the last round!

That's definitely not a problem for me. I'll just be jittery and super excited about the envelope I've got sitting on my desk waiting to be filled for another couple of days. which...isn't really a bad thing.

Awhh. This is adorable, and really, really pretty. Congratz for convincing him to paint with you That can be kind of tough. And you've totally got a closet-van gough on your hands (minus the ear cutting off thing...and the crazy, I'd hope...)

And I know what you're going through. My boyfriend and I have been doing the long distance thing for ages now, and it's little things like that that kind of...make the experience more rewarding.

Good luck in college to both of you, too

So as a little impromptu project, I decided to try Styrofoam reduction printing, which is like Ukrainian Easter Egg painting, but in a more thrifty, print-like form. They didn't quite turn out the way I wanted them to (three people standing on a hill with stars hanging from strings), but I think that the effects I got out of them are pretty cool. Each of the four prints is completely different from the next. I might try and get a tutorial up here once I get more printing ink, because the concept is pretty simple and quite fun.



This is the first print I made, and probably the cleanest one.



I added black onto a layer on this one





This one is my all-time favourite one. I like how it looks really...vibrant and like something out of one of those old 3-D movies that would hurt your eyes.

But yes. Enjoy

So I decided to try my hand at making a little book. Annd...seeing as apparently August means that I should be getting ready for Halloween, I decided to base it on my favourite bird- the crow. The writing all over the book is from a poem my boyfriend wrote for me, that I found just...perfect for the book. I can post that somewhere here, too, if someone wants the full thing.

Just a side note. The brown paper is all handmade by me from broken down cotton fibers from old t-shirts, and the rest of the paper was cut from scraps I found in my aunt's scrap booking garbage. The buttons are all old castoffs from shirts, and from a bag of unused buttons I bought. I tried to make my own ink for the stamps, but I'm still trying to perfect making nice thick, black ink- It hasn't worked so far, so I used simple printing ink.



The cover page. I love how a cute little button looks quite eerie on this page. The tree is on the last page of the book, but the crows stay and look down at you while you go through the whole book o.0



I want to try and improve my printing skills, so I found one of my favourite books on birds, and cut out three layers of feathers from a wing on waxed paper. It looks so good on the paper, people think I just bought it printed on there.



Just a little bit more detail. I love this page.



I'm realizing that I'm in love with swirlies and buttons, too. It's becoming an addiction...



The stripes on this page stretch around the back page and onto the front one. I made the cover stripes look like a city, if you turn it sideways.

Ahah. Yeahh. That gash was pretty much my favourite part of...well...anyone's makeup ^^;;.

The sad thing was, the paramedic that put a neck brace on me wrecked it when he taped my head to the spinal board! I came home and all I had was a big red smudge on my forehead.

Our lovely Ontario government likes to pretend my part of the province doesn't exist anyway, so I feel more Western if that helps?

Aha! Another Northwestern Ontarian? Yayyy! I'm happy I'm not the only one coming from middle o' nowhere Ontario. =P Although, come winter again here, I'm going to be transplanted to Quebec for school once again. Escape the extreme cold for the winter. 

I hate how you have to tell people that you're from Northern Ontario, and then people go "Oh, you mean like Sudbury?!" And you have to explain to them that you're closer to Winnipeg than you are Toronto.