Diggin' the Lovecraft Lo Fi

 A little Herbert West vibe for you today. Click on the pic for a nice Reanimator Lo Fi vibe...

Vintage Hallowe'en

 

 

 

LOVE vintage magazine covers! So sweet!

Behind You!

 

I've posted work from Brian Coldrick before, but the month of October seems to be a particularly wonderful time to re-share it!

If you can, become a Patron to help encourage him to make more of these delightfully creepy, one-panel animations!

Speaking of Music

Speaking of music, I'm alway amazed at how much Hallowe'en content there is out there from the sixties and seventies. I mean, yes, there's been a constant flow of music, ghost stories and horror stories since the Victrola was invented, but the sixties and seventies seem to be the sweet spot for horror and monster recordings!

For a pretty good catalog of vinyl and vinyl transferred to digital, click the monster go-go dancer above!

A Lofi Halloween Sunday

 Coffee? Check! Comfy cardi? Check! Spooky book? Double check!

Now for a chill soundtrack for a Sunday in October. Click on the little ghost and settle in!

New Needful Things!

 

At last! The ShellHawk's Creations Etsy shop is getting updated! Some jack-o'-lanterns, some other cups, and finally, the Supernatural cups!

The last firing got more good results and only a few imperfect ones, which are in the shop at a discount. They're not all in, yet, so keep an eye out in the next week or so.

The shoulder injury I suffered earlier this year really set my schedule back, but I still managed to get a few things (over a hundred, I think) done. I really had a thing for cups, mugs and tankards this summer. Don't ask why, because I have no idea!

In other news, the Open House went really well! Totally worth the time, effort, and lost sleep!

Everything skeleton was gone! Bowl and mugs! And it really made me so happy that the kind woman from the ceramics studio bought four of my jack-o'-lanterns to take to Canada as gifts for her friends. It's incredibly satisfying, knowing my creations are going to loved ones!

I'm resting my shoulder for now, but soon, I'll be back at it. I'll be pushing through the holidays, stocking up on my Halloween things to apply for shows happening next years. It feels like a triumph to be doing what I do best and making my fans happy!

For the Birthday Girl

Over the summer, a friend approached me with a commission. He wanted a cookie jar for his wife's birthday.

This was before The Chrome Behemoth, a.k.a. my new kiln, arrived, so I let him know that I was at the mercy of the ceramics center as to the completion date. I had a goal to fill up one of the kilns there (and I did!) because you really shouldn't run a kiln with only one or two items in it, and I knew the center wouldn't run a half-empty firing.

He said it was fine, and gave me a date he'd like to get it by, but if I didn't get it finished by them, no worries. He's one of those people who just gets it, and he knew she'd be happy with whenever it came. (God, I love low-maintenance people!)

There's a reason I'm cautious about doing commissions. First, quite honestly, people are a pain about it. They keep changing their minds on a whim, like you didn't just spend hours thinking about and drawing out their design before you make the thing. They don't recognize the words, "change order." They think you're a machine. Second, they ignore everything you told them about the project going in and just randomly decide they're experts on ceramics. Kind of like how folks who spend an hour on YouTube are suddenly epidemiologists. 

So, yeah. I'm not usually eager for commissions, but I'll make exceptions for low-maintenance people.

We came to an agreement on cost and all (I ended up knocking down the price because getting the finished product took longer than I had anticipated), and I started working on a cookie jar.

And then I thought, they're Hallowe'en fanatics. I wonder if they like Nightmare Before Christmas? So I texted the guy and asked what he would thing about making it a Frog's Breath jar. He got really excited and gave me the go-ahead.

So I threw and trimmed the body of the cookie jar and did the same with the lid. I had thrown the lid with a regular, knob-type handle, but then I thought, how about the frog's head? Wouldn't that be more fun? Add a little whimsy? So, yeah, I did! I started sculpting the frog from screenshots of the movie and then started the process of underglazing him to have a similar color scheme. And then, of course, I thought about the label and started hunting around for the right font, which lead me to some perfect examples of Sally's labels for her spell jars, and I got that resized and laid out to underglaze, too.

I thought the combination of the two turned out really well, but as you know if you've been reading this blog, having it look pretty before it's been bisqued and then glaze-fired are completely different things!

But the bisque went well!

Now for the glaze!

It should have been fairly simple. I picked a celadon, wanting a sort of rustic green, which is what happens when you use celadon glazes on stoneware clay instead of porcelain. What I didn't realize is that it would only turn out that way if it was put in a reduction firing, meaning that it goes in a gas kiln and the O2 is reduced in the firing chamber to create a chemical reaction which turns the glaze green.

And no, it doesn't look green when it goes on! Crazy, huh?

But when you put that sucker in an oxidation firing, meaning there's always O2 in the firing chamber, it just turns this sort of honey color, which I'm not particularly a fan of.

Even so, in this case, it turned out well!

So last week, I got it packed up and shipped to Folsom, only a month-and-a-half late. (Insert eye-roll here.) But remember how I mentioned the client is low maintenance?

Yeah, she was pretty happy with her cookie jar! And I got to learn some more about cone 10 glazes!

And really, that last picture is why I keep making ceramics. People get happy when they buy my stuff! The functional ceramics are incorporated into their daily routines. They get touched and used and thought about every day.

No, I'll probably never be rich from this (at least financially), but after everything I've been through in the last decade, being satisfied with my life is far more valuable to me. Making art and functional things beautiful has made my life so much richer than I could have imagined when I first started taking ceramics classes back in Folsom!

Halloween at High Noon - PlasmaTronic

I look forward to their new releases every year! What could be better than that post-Punk, experimental electronic music for making Halloween? 

Click on the pic for this year's offering!

My Scary Bookshelf

Some of you may be looking for some creepy stories you can curl up with as the weather turns to the cool, crisp days and nights of Fall. I post this Pinterest board of stories every year because I generally will add to it, little by little, every year. And also, because I need a place to got to, to remind myself of the stories I want to read or re-read.

So click on the scarecrow above to be taken to the board and peruse the offerings there! 

Yes, qualifying purchases on Amazon may lad me a microscopic commission, but don't worry. I won't be using the wads of cash to go to space or anything dumb like that...

The Legend of the Scarecrow - A ShellHawk's Nest Tradition!

Click on the pic for a truly charming story about a sweet little scarecrow!