New Doings in the New Nest

The hands of a working potter. Manicure? Me?

OK, it's not really new, anymore. It's coming up on two years, this June. Plus I grew up there, so it really technically isn't new...

Anyway, since I was able to bring a wheel into the place (amazing that fluttering my eyelashes at dad still works!), I started playing around with new ideas. New mediums. Anything to get the fun back into creativity again.

On a side note, I started meditating daily again. It's been well over a decade since I last had a daily practice of meditation, and it's made a big difference to my creativity and my state of mind. (Still a long way to go with that, as there are some serious and lingering anxiety issues after what I went through, but enough of that...)

Well, since the creative ideas started popping again, I thought that adding beeswax candles to my shop this year would be a logical next step. After all, if I sell jack-o'-lanterns, shouldn't I be a one-stop-shop and supply the flame for all those burning grins? 

My imagination went another step further and I thought it would be fun to make ceramic jack-o'-lantern votives! So after some mental calculations, I decided to go back to the jack design I used to do, way back before I knew how to make enclosed forms. Only now, I would make them smaller, the better to make the piece into a good receptacle for the wax.

Thrown "off the hump" and waiting to be trimmed.

Since the studio in which I work is a high-fire studio, my first tests are going to be with underglaze first, then be fired with a clear glaze. If they turn out well, I'll make candles out of them. That way, when the candle burns down, another tea candle can be thrown in! 

And if you look below, you'll see I'm already working on that angle!

Of course, my usual difficulty of having more creative ideas than time to execute them, is still in play.

How on earth do people have time to be bored?!