I dropped off my Birdie Birdhouses at the Urban Gardener today.

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A few potters at my studio are working on dinnerware, including me, I’ve been looking for different ways to paint them. stencils, dipping, dripping, quick drawings, silk screening and transfers are all of interest. I like these.. dishes, diamonds, & love… “Lovesick” by Pop Ink. You can find them at French Paper online.

I was commissioned to make 2 dz ceramic cupcakes for a very cool cupcake bakery in NYC, Babycakes. All their cupcakes are vegan, gluten free and free of refined sugar! I was asked to make these ceramic cupcakes look just like their real cupcakes at their bakery. It has been a treat to work with them, I love their style and am thrilled to have my cupcakes on display in their merchant window!

I like Lorena Barezueta’s work here and the concept of what was disposable is now a treasure and reusable.   

Trixie Delicious from New Zealand makes really killer refurbished china with attitude.

Mature Content Post:

I love the extreme conditions in Corey Arnold’s work environment & how it affects his artwork. What a great idea to put such a talent aboard a crab fishing boat. Corey’s photography amplifies the brute strength of nature with a beautiful color palette and painterly composition. I like his sense of humor and the perfect poses of bold colors that would make really fantastic paintings. He wrote this great article on fecal face, “How to be an Alaskan Fisherman” that introduced me to his work & listen to an NPR “Fishtales” here.  I found a painter who has done some paintings after Corey’s photography, Laura Heather Carol, she was as much inspired by Corey’s compositions as I am.

Corey Arnold

Laura Heather Carol

Food is art too, it evokes feelings and stuff. Here is a dish that you can get creative with! When I stayed with a friend in Italy several years ago he made this salad called panzanella - It was the most fresh and refreshing salad and is perfect for a spring dinner. It’s also perfect for using that day old french bread that’s too hard to do anything else with and if you’ve got leftover veggies from the night before you can use those too. Panzanella salad is more about the idea of combining veggies and bread with oil and vinegar than specific ingredients. So be creative and use up the leftovers to make this delicious salad.

Prepare the bread: - combine these ingredients, toss with S&P and toast under the broiler. Set aside and let cool.

• 6 cups of crusty bread cut up into crouton size pieces
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic diced
• 6 tblspns Parmesan

The vinegerette - combine with a whisk in a bowl.

• Half of a red onion finely diced
• 2 and a half tablespoons of white wine vinegar
• Juice of half of a lemon
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1/2 tspn of dijon mustard

Veggies - 4 cups of any of your favorite legumes & veggies… click here for inspiration.

I’m fairly new to the Etsy Mud Team and when I was perusing all the Etsy Mud Team member’s stores, all I could think was “wow”! - we’ve got a bunch of very talented people in here. Read the rest to see some of my favorites.

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Hey all you Atlanta locals - I’ll be assistant teaching a pottery hand building class with Devanie Schlipp at Cabbagtown Clay and Glassworks beginning in May! Hand building is a great technique for beginning potters to understand how to design and execute their clay projects by pinching, coiling, and constructing with strips and slabs. Class begins on May 7th.

Read the rest of this entry for all CCGW classes & contact info.

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I think the retro feel of this pottery team’s work is fantastic! I have a lot of friends who would gravitate towards this vintage style and I love it too. Circa Ceramics screens overglazes onto decal paper and transfers that to their ware. When firing, the overglaze image melts into the glazed object and it cannot be washed off. Andy of Circa Ceramics warns to beware of decal papers that require using a spray fixative to adhere the image onto the surface of the object, as it will wash off. Good to know! ~ Thanks Andy.

Alex Gross is currently showing in his first NY exhibition solo show, “Mysteries and Manners” at the Johnathan Levine Gallery. Alex has a beautifully refined creative ability and it is good to see him in NYC showing it off. The show opened just two days ago and is already almost sold out - lovely - can’t wait to be him. Juxtapoz interviewed him about the show and for someone who has such a master’s style he seems such a regular person.

So I’m learning how to knit and I have a couple great books that I bought, in San Francisco last year. I thought they had the best diagrams and instructions in them. Learn to Knit by Sue Whiting and Stitch’ N Bitch, The Knitters Handbook by Debbie Stoller. The Learn to Knit is very straight forward and the Stitch’ N Bitch book is quirky and humor lends well to learning how to knit, cause if you don’t get it at first it can be frustrating. After all we are dealing with two small sticks and a string, I mean how hard can it be?!

I needed new needles and so I went to a great little knitting store in Virginia Highlands, called Knitch, and got some #8 bamboo needles with ends, a good beginner set. Knitch was a little tricky to find because it is located in the back alley, behind that little row of stores on St. Charles Ave. Very nice location once you find it, has a nice garden patio and is quiet and peaceful like a knitting store should be. Once I get this knitting down, I may join that group of ladies in the store just knitting away and chatting about every day things - charming. If I still have trouble I may take one of their classes.

So last night I got my books out and needles and yarn and began trying to “cast on” the needle - I became frustrated, I was doing it wrong, the stitches were too tight, etc etc. After an hour of knotting (not knitting) my husband had a brilliant idea - I should get online and check out You Tube! So I did and it was awesome. I was able to watch someone else (better than those diagrams in the book) and could stop and start and rewind their actions until I got it right, I was knitting in 10 minutes. Just knitting rows, mind you, I’ve yet to understand a pattern. Not only that but I discovered some really cool crafters, Threadbanger, using You Tube as a weekly programming event, definitely worth checking out. It was this Threadbanger video that I used to learn from.

The Atlanta Dogwood Festival has changed its location due to the drought. It’s now located at Lenox Square in Buckhead - will be easy to take Marta to N7 Buckhead station.

Spring always seems the shortest season and the most enjoyable (unless you have allergies). I created this painting in honor of spring and my desperation to hold onto to it for as long as I can or am allowed to. This is my first painting in a very ,very, long time and I feel a bit rusty - I know it will only get better from here. Also, this is the smallest canvas I’ve ever painted on, 12×16, it was a challenge for me to constrain the composition to that size and I think the poor girls legs suffered for it. I may go back in and remove the black lines, might look too “coloring book”. What do you think?

I painted this old window and installed it over my kitchen window. The light coming through acts like stained glass & is better to look at than my neighbor’s air conditioner.

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