My New Kiln!

Now that I am working from home, I needed a kiln at home, so I can fire my mini clay houses. I know that I am going to like having a kiln here at home, so I can fire a load of houses any time I need to. My new little kiln, to match my little houses, came in 2 weeks ago.  I have used it twice. Once for a greenware firing and the 2nd time was for the glaze firing.  It was so fun to open it this morning to see how the glaze firing turned out..  It turned out perfect.  And the little size of my kiln is just the right size.  So I am ready to continue creating lots of little houses and tiles.  Its a good thing, because I had a custom order for 3 houses, a tree, and a fence, that I needed to finish and ship.  Here are some pictures of the kiln with the first load of glazed houses. As you can see, there is plenty of room for many more houses, and there is room for another shelf.   So I need to get busy filling up my Etsy shop!

Beth ♥

Happy Customers and Colored Pencil Artists

Recently I've completed a few custom clay house orders and I am working on another.  Even though I post a lot of examples of my clay houses and my owl paintings lately, I am also a colored pencil artist.  I have had the pleasure of meeting some excellent, award winning, artists through the CPSA national organization.  Recently, Ranjini Venkatachari, a colored pencil artist ordered this custom clay house (Art Studio) from me.  I've been familiar with Ranjini's work through an online forum for a few years, but got to meet her last year at the CPSA convention.  She is a very nice person, as are most colored pencil artists!   Anyway, she wanted a little house that looked like an art studio, like the one in my Etsy shop, but personalized and in her colors. I also added the Heart Magnet with her initial, because she just celebrated a birthday.  So she received them in the mail the other day and she blogged about it and posted a picture of them in her blog. I added an easel with a sign with 'Ranjini V's" studio on the tiny painting, where I used the primary colors that she used in one of her colored pencil paintings that she had posted online.  After I mailed the package to her, I found out that the painting that I was looking at had been featured in an article in a Professional artist magazine!  I thought that was so cool! And she is, not only featured in one magazine this month, but two!  Her art is also on the cover of the June 2012 issue of Ann Kullberg's CP magazine.
So, I just wanted to give Ranjini a big thank you for both, ordering one of my HeartHomes and for blogging about it!

Beth ♥