I Shouldn't Have Taken a Day Off...

New sugar skull platter. I'll be doing more of these!

I finally got the last bits of Halloween goodness out of the kiln yesterday, having done the last glaze firing on Tuesday afternoon. I couldn't even open the kiln until around 11:00 a.m. yesterday, because the last thing I needed was to have crazing on the plates because they  cooled too quickly. (Crazing is an unwanted crackling in fired glazes which can be caused by too-fast cooling or the glaze body and clay body not fitting together properly. Of course, in Raku, we want crazing, which just goes to show that you can't please everyone, all the time!)

I finally got everything packed and shipped off to West Coast Haunters yesterday at 3:30 p.m. I started this year's Hallowe'en ceramics inventory list, which is part of what took me so long. I've also started to create hang tags for my work to include with each piece. They're very, very basic right now, but they'll evolve once I actually get a logo made for the Hallowe'en art of ShellHawk's Creations and can start the work of creating the shapes and sizes. I ran across the idea in Mea Rhee's (of Good Elephant Pottery) pottery blog. She calls them "little salespeople," and she's right. This year I am slowly (glacially slowly, at times) moving things forward, and hang tags are part of the marketing plan.

Anyway, making the ceramics, glazing it, creating the tags and then attaching them to each individual piece always takes more time than I anticipate. You'd think I'd know better, but that suicidal optimism kicks in and hamstrings me every time. Since I wasn't actually anticipating going to this show until comparatively last minute, the last few weeks have been more hellish than I anticipated. Memorial weekend brought a birthday party, and I had suggested to Mr. ShellHawk that we go to Amador county to go pick up our wine selection for our wine club. Etc., etc... 

Ah, well. We needed to spend some time together, away from both of our works, and we had a great time!

With luck, I'll post some pics from WCHC over the weekend, but if I don't get to it, I'll post when I get back.

See ya!