Hi I have just spent a lovely weekend attending the local Summer Community Craft and Music Festival organised by Cheltenham Connect(for more information visit their website www.cheltenhamconnect.co.uk).

The weather was lovely , a bit windy the first day and Sunday very warm!! It was great to catch up with lots of other stall holders and listen to all the live bands playing in the pub next to the fair .

Here are some photos of the view from my stall .

Also took some photos of my stall which I usually forget to do .

I have been doing Fairs and events every weekend for the last six weeks so looking forward to a free weekend this weekend! I will be busy now making more work to replenish my stock and for the shops I sell through. I will be taking more photos along the way and be back soon xxx

I have been very busy getting ready for an Open Studios Week .It has started this weekend and will be on until the 12th June . This is a studio I share with two lovely friends and it is a workshop/ gallery /Shop . I mostly sell from there as clay is a bit messy . It has been great to have a permanent space to display work . Also it is great to keep changing it around and we have got abit carried away with fairy lights etc in the past but "such fun"!!

So here are lots of photos of the studio ,hope you enjoy them!!
The lovely cards in this photo are made by Ali Corder and they are a range called "Random Ransoms" and they will be available soon on www.notonthehighstreet.com soon .

I have lots of craft fairs and events coming up soon ,and lots of outlets to supply too ,so I can see lots of late nights on the horizon in the coming weeks .I will take some photos of the making of my new bird dishes when I make my next batch soon .

Bye for now

Kath x

New bird decorations

I'm very excited about my new bird decorations I have been designing ! I thought I would show you the making process from start to finish ,there are a lot of stages and they are quite time consuming but worth it for the finished result ! First I have rolled out the clay and cut out the shapes with a cardboard template I designed.The edges are smoothed and sponged for a good finish . Also I have added some impressed decoration with stamps that I have made .

Next I have attached a paper wing and stuck it down with water ,which will act as a resist when slip is painted on .

Various coloured slips are then applied and the paper resist is then carefully removed .

More impressed decoration is added using a metal tool to give the effect of stitching around the wing. White spots are added using a slip trailer ,which is a bit like an icing bag .

The birds are then left to completely dry out ready for the first biscuit firing .

Here are the birds after being biscuit fired .

The birds are now dipped in a transparent glaze ready for firing.

They are carefully placed in the kiln not touching so they don't stick together. They are fired again which takes a whole day to reach the right temperature ,then another 8-12 hours to cool down .

This is the most exciting bit about pottery ,opening the kiln . I have been doing this a long time and it still is a thrill to see how the work looks finished !

Some for the birds are turned into hanging decorations and some I have tried as decorations on sticks for putting in plant pots .

Really pleased with these new designs ,hope you like them too !

I'd love to hear what you think too !

P.s These are my own designs and they have taken a lot of work to get right so kindly please don't copy these images or designs to sell Thanks!

I am busy working on some new ceramic designs using more coloured slips and some more burnished smoke-fired pieces for an open studios week in June . Will be taking lots of photos

along the way and look forward to sharing them soon xx

new crochet project

I have been playing around with a few different granny square patterns using some lovely coloured King Cole Bamboo cotton I had .

I have been inspired by a great crochet blog MeMeRose .She is making a spring blanket with a lovely pastel colour palette . Having some time off over Easter hols from the usual busy making of the clay variety I had some fun with some crocheting.

I decided to make a large spring blanket of my own .I am using Stylecraft Special which has a good colour range for a more budget wool , as it's going to take alot of wool !!Here are the colours I am using.

I make the coloured centres first then do the white border and join as I go with a method of joining with a slip stitch instead of a chain between each cluster (find this on Attic24 blog).This method is great as the blanket grows as you make rather than all that sewing together at the end!

Here is a sneak preview of the first section I have completed ,it is 10 x 5 squares which is an 1/8th of the whole blanket which is abit daunting!!

I'm really pleased with how the colours look together ,I hope I have the staying power to finish the whole blanket ....

kitchen makeover

We had a new kitchen about a year ago but some of the finishing touches needed doing and I had an idea what I wanted ,but was searching for certain things in thr local furniture charity shops .

One lucky day I found an antique pine dresser top ready to put on a worktop which saved my other half from building it from scratch ! Also I hankered after a country style kitchen plate rack by the sink and also found one of these . The dresser top was £30 and the plate rack was £25 bargain!! All they needed was a coat of paint and I'm very happy with the result .

Also my other half as built lovely panelling instead of tiles around the worktops and left a gap for me to make a tile splashback ,which will be revealed later !

This is the plate rack looking abit old and scruffy !

This is the finished result very lovely!

This is the shelf in situ before painting, with "lovely" orange antique pine . In my minds eye I imagined lots of storage jars in rows and a collection of some of my handmade pottery I have collected over the years .

Freshly painted !

Finished result so much better .

Now to the tiles ,here are some ready to be biscuit fired .

In my workshop after being fired ,all 40 of them!

After much re-arranging on the table ready to be stuck on and grouted .

The finished result ! Well worth all the effort .

Hope this little makeover gave you gave you some joy and some inspiration.

Will be back soon with some new bird designs to share ,very exciting (well they are to me anyway!) x