Exhibition news

I hope lots of you will be able to visit the exhibition.  I'm really pleased to be exhibiting with these other artists and to be working to a different theme.  As there are six of us, I will be selecting work - old and new- which resonates more particularly with the theme of "Grounded". 

Look out for some different coloured spotty mugs!  There is a collection of green and brown themed spotty mugs which are for the moment "limited edition" in number, though if they prove popular I may make more of them.  And there will be .....  well, you'll have to come to the exhibition to find out what else I'm making .....


On a different subject, as an update, I'm delighted to say that I raised £270 for ShelterBox with my wallhanging raffle.  The hanging was one by a customer who came to my stall at Stroud Farmers Market.  Thank you to all who donated.

Win a wallhanging!

Do you like this wallhanging?  Would you like the chance to win it for yourself (or someone else)? 

I'm offering it as a raffle prize with the cost of your entry being a donation to my chosen charity, ShelterBox.  I'm asking for donations of minimum £5 to an excellent cause and in return you will be entered into the raffle to win the hanging.  The raffle will be drawn either on 28th March 2014 or when the donations have reached £170 (the original price of the hanging), whichever is the later. 

Do visit my JustGiving page to find out more and perhaps make a donation.

Spots!

Light ones, dark ones, plain ones, lustre ones, gold ones.  Large and small mugs. 

Have you seen my new scarves?

All these are new.  There are more blue scarves this time as well as a rather nice one in greys with splashes of red. 

There are new designs too:  fuchsia, small triangles and feathers, to name my favourite three.

You can find some in By Local, some in Vivant and the rest will be at Another Beastly Art Exhibition starting on Wednesday.

If you see something you like here which you would like to buy, please email me to reserve your choice.  After the exhibition the scarves that were there will be available to buy on my website.

Tiny Textiles Treats

... are here at last.  Each one is approx 4" (10cms) square and they cost between £8.50 and £14.00.  Some are silk-painted with a little stitch detail, some are machine embroidered appliqué.

The mini-pics will have their first outing next Wednesday - (gulp!) - when Another Beastly Art Exhibition opens in Cheltenham.  Exactly what other work will be ready to exhibit then remains to be seen.  I am working towards a lustre firing so hope for exciting new pots, but I also have new canvasses to frame, posters, price labels and notices to print and everything to pack up, all by Tuesday afternoon.  So what am I doing faffing about making group photos and blogging ? .......

Photos

Well, you can't say this post doesn't do what it says on the tin.

It's remarkably warm for the time of year, so we went for a little wander by the canal.  There are things in flower but I hadn't ever noticed before that they are all white.  I know the first flowers of the year are often yellow but had never noticed before that there were so many white things.

One photo is of course not flowers, but the sunlight on the leaves seemed to go with the general theme.

This blog needs to get back to its roots, I think.  I used to post photos or general news about our lives but then the blog got rather work-oriented.  People seem interested in that but increasingly there is less to say about it.  This is partly because I'm just not able to do the work I want to do.  Sciatica took care of a large part of the year.  It's mostly gone.  However, I now have a recurring rib injury - something I did when falling over last October which has obviously not healed properly.  Not sure what yet, but that doesn't actually make any difference to the fact that I can't make pots.

Stock is low, Another Beastly Art Exhibition is coming up in a few weeks and I wanted to make new ceramic work for that.  But it can't be helped.  I know rib injuries just take time.

In the mean time there is plenty else that needs doing, finishing off, labelling and packing all the textiles work I did while we were in France. 

In other news ...

I made my Christmas cake yesterday.  Regular readers may remember last year when the mice not only ate a lot of the stored cake but made their nest in it and as a final insult, left behind some bits of mortar and an old screw.  I have bought a new plastic cake box and this year's cake is now in it.  Because of the rib injury, I thought it wise not to lift the cake-in-a-box up onto a shelf above my head, so I asked M to do it.  When I asked him to put the box on the mouse shelf, he knew exactly what I meant.  The mouse shelf it shall ever be, then.

Hidden tasks

Another Beastly Art Exhibition is on its way, but not closely enough yet for publicity images, Facebook events or web pages.  Nevertheless, much of the work I've been doing over the past couple of months is in preparation for the exhibition in the middle of November.  No pots while I'm in France, but textiles work, cards and earrings can all be made here and the work you see at an exhibition has often been made months ahead, as I think I've mentioned here before.

As I was working away yesterday, I was aware that I'd achieved quite a bit but at the same time had nothing new to show for it and began to think about how much of not only putting on an exhibition but generally running an arts/crafts business consists of hidden tasks.  I've already created a slideshow which shows many of the hidden tasks which go into making a mug.  I sometimes have it running at exhibitions but if you've never seen it, you can also see it here on my website. 

Recently I've been meaning to tweet more than I have been doing as I realise my focus has been much more on Facebook and that this isn't fair to those who prefer Twitter.  I announced on Twitter that I would treat the beginning of September as a new year, since it heralds a new academic year, and therefore my new year's resolution was to tweet more often and more interestingly.

Ah.  You see what I did there?  Placed my own petard roundly centre stage and hoist myself on it.

Luckily a solution sprang to mind:  tweets about individual hidden tasks.  There are so many of them.  Just today I've done about five of them already.  I shall probably select the tasks somewhat randomly although they may appear in related clutches.

If you are on Twitter but not yet following me, then this is the chance you've been waiting for.  There's a link to my Twitter page just over there on the right of this piece.

To kick things off, today's hidden task is reproduced here:

#hiddentask no 1: design sticky label for packaging for new product and print out a sheet of them.