More Pottery!

My friends and coworkers Mish and Betsy and I did more pottery today! Here are my latest pieces, before firing!!

This last piece is etched- white background with black painted over it and then etched to reveal the white. Next time I may try a more futuristic city!

Rat pics!

More adorable Rat photos!



Here are Saiyuri and Nezumi (our girls):





Saiyuri (above and below)

Nezumi sticking her head out of Tony's shirt...



Here are Kato and Sulu (our boys):

As you can see, they try to sleep in one of their bowls together, despite the fact that they are getting too big for it!

Kato (above), Sulu (below)

My Latest Addiction: Painting Pottery

My Friend Mish and I are addicted to painting pottery. Its all her fault- it was her idea in the first place. Now we are on a painting spree, targeting all the pottery places near Seattle, leaving pottery in our wake everywhere we go. LOL.

Here are some recent pieces:

My stone lantern before firing: I used natural paints (that look brown when put on), and I etched thru the top few layers of paint for added texture and pattern.








Here's the finished piece, after firing! Notice the gorgeous greens/browns- this is how the natural paint looks after being fired.

This last photo is the inside of the lantern! Painted w/ the same paint as the middle, but because of the location it fired to be more brown than green. Nice!!

The following are two 4x4 tiles I created that same day- these pics are from after the firing:

On another pottery painting spree, I decided to try my hand at fused glass: Here's my piece before firing!

What it looks like now that its been fired and slumped into a square bowl-shape:

This piece is a large tray. I decided to try a "bubble" technique- I blew bubbles into a cup of water mixed with paint and dish soap and then swiped the tray over the bubbles. This image is before firing.

After Firing:

You can see how dark the red became- looks awesome in person!

Julie & I make paper!

Hand-decorated papers!! Using paper bags, brown wrapping paper, watercolor paper and plain cardstock as the base, along with acrylics and tempura paints and lots of glitter, my friend Julie and I made a ton of background paper!!

(One of Julie's favorites above- love how she left the mesh in there)

My New Rust Book is Finished!

I put another Blurb book together- this time the theme is RUST. I'm very excited about this one as I think it contains some of my best "textural" photos. Most of it was shot at Fort Worden in Port Townsend WA, but some of it is from my other travels, including: rusty hitching posts in New Orleans, a random little cemetary on the coast of WA, and a pool of rust in the Roman Baths in England. Even every day objects served as inspiration, as I shot photos of an old grill and porch mounts around the old 1940s house Tony and I are renting!

The photo included above is one of my favorite spreads- and one you won't see in the preview (alas- the book is slightly too long to allow all the pages to show in the preview). The image on the L is the pool at the Roman Baths and the image on the R is an old post sticking up from the sand on a remote stretch of beach in WA.

Here's the link to my Blurb site!

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/189773/a8936e4762ab414fcb44cb9f77c5f44c