The Art Academy Jewelry Bowl Making Class

I found a Groupon in Aug. that I jumped on for a place near my new apartment that offered pottery classes. It was a two for one deal and thought because the project I chose to do would interest my sister that she would want to go with me. BUT she didn't. She didn't want to actually make the piece just decorated. So not having made any friends here yet I asked one of my sister's friends who is creative if she would like to join me and she said YES.  

We went a couple of weeks ago to The Art Academy to make jewelry bowls from scratch.  It was interesting from the beginning. We walked in on time but many others were there and had started already. The young man gave us very short not helpful or detailed instructions on what to do and didn't even give us a pottery lesson. I ended up answering many of the questions my table had.  There was about 15 people in all at this class.  

We got a sheet of rolled out clay, used paper bowls to cut and lay the clay out in and molded the clay to the bowl. We could then use tools and cut outs to add to the mold (though the options were very limited).  You then used the ONE blow dryer they had to dry your piece to a place where you could peel it out of the mold and it would keep shape.  Then supposedly the clay could be glazed right away which I had never heard of. So we glazed our pieces and left them to be kiln fired.  

It turned out the pieces technically aren't waterproof because the bottoms weren't able to be glazed. Many people made regular bowls but I wanted one for my earrings so I made a jewelry one. Well, it turned out to be a flop!!! The glaze made it look better but the flower I tried to make in the center ended up looking like a Georgia O'keefe if you get my drift. And the holes weren't close enough to the edge so most of my earrings couldn't fit right on it.  Needless to say this adventure was fun but the product was a flap. The bowl is now in the goodwill bin!!!

It turns out the guy teaching the class was in his first week of work. Very nice but has some work to do on actually teaching a class. He's an artist but not a teacher yet.  The other cool thing that happened is at one point I looked at the woman next to me and did a double take...I recognized her from my plane trip from Columbia to Rochester in July after my round of interviews. She recognized me to. What a small world we live in!!

This is the unfired piece of my sister's friends piece. Her's turned out really well.

My unfired piece.

Pics of finished piece.

Art, Art and More Art

Last weekend was pretty wonderful. While I had some things to accomplish like laundry, cleaning up the house, getting the car inspected, and so on I was able to sleep in a little on Saturday, finish a good book and then hang out with some good friends and create awesome cards.  My friend Marcy is a card making guru. I don’t know where she comes up with the ideas for each card but they pretty amazing. One of my favorites is her hand carved/made godzilla stamp.  A bunch of us met ate great food and made the cards you see below. I love these get togethers. I just wanted to keep on creating.

My creative juices carried over to the week. On Tuesday evening instead of coming home after work and running I took a nap and then got up and searched for a piece of wood that I had laying around to start working on an art piece idea I had.  When at my friend’s house for the card party I saw a piece of artwork on my friend’s wall, took a picture of it and used it for inspiration.  My student worker has been “bugging” me for a while to receive a “Casey Original” piece of artwork as inspiration.  

I used this painting I saw that my friend purchased from an artist at the Cornhill Festival.  I found a piece of new pine wood in the basement and used that as my canvas.  I gessoed the wood with a few good coats and then using white paint, I used a few others colors and some water and created the base of the painting.  I took some stamps to add texture to the piece and then used a blow dryer to dry everything quickly.  I took a couple of images I found online of leaves/branches and a bird and cut them out. I added black paint and then pressed them on the canvas.  I rubbed the cut outs on and then pealed off. It was a spotty transfer so I took a brush and gently applied more black paint on to touch up the images.  I used block lettering stamps to put on the quote to finish up the piece.  Total project time 1.5 hours. Cost nothing as I had all supplies. I love the end result and I think my student worker with like it too.

The creative juices continued into my AT groups at work.  The directive for group members this week was to depict something/what inspires you.  I liked this quote I found about being yourself. I used tissue paper and decoupage to plaster an art board with tissue paper. I used a blow dryer to dry it. Then once dry I took pages from an hilarious book I found at the library sale earlier in the week.  I cut an owl image with one of the pages and then used the other pages to create where I would eventually put the quote. I adhered with decoupage.  I used my letter stamps to put the quote on. Then with the owl I used acrylics, watered them down and painted it. Once dry I used a permanent marker to outline the owl and the outside edges of the quote pages.  Overall I like the painting. Not sure what I’m going to do with it. Probably give it to someone who wants it. :)

While visiting with my parents I helped my mom make a doggie birthday cake for our family dog fatty Patty. She got this batter from a neighbor. It was pretty dense. I added the peanut butter frosting and the mini doggie biscuits.  Fatty Patty appeared to like her cake. She scarfed it up pretty quickly! :)