Home-Grown, Hand-Painted And Hand-Made

It truly is Spring (I know yet another post referring to Spring- get used to it already, I can hear you guys say - but seriously when one has just come out of a cold winter into sunshine, one needs to give appropriate thanks and reverence) when even my mini cactus starts to flower. The little red bits are the buds and when they bloom, they open up into the cream-coloured flowers on the top. They look like dried flowers which I've pinned into the cactus but I kid you not, they are real.

The next Spring event is that I've finally received my belated birthday pressie of the painted shoes. Just in time. I've worn out my original pair of painted canvas shoes at the end of Summer and have requested these (design left to giver's discretion) as a birthday present. So it came over, courtesy of a colleague who is a stranger to both the giver and the recipient, how nice of her. So I've got a chicken on one shoe and a cow on the other. I had scrutinised the design and concluded that although the pattern had both my favourite animals, it was somehow lacking in red, as the orange and purple were too dark on the blue and green background. So with my red pen in hand, I've proceeded to dab in red where I deemed fit. I think the little touch-ups brought out the design better. Well I am claiming my artistic (and owner's) licence to customise them ever so slightly.

This afternoon I went into the ceramics studio and saw that my pieces are out of the kiln. I've previously air-brushed them (that's when I felt a certain empathy with the graffiti spray-paint artists- you just can't stop when you've got one of those spray thingys in your hand!) However, the brown has become more staid after the pieces were fired. In order to keep to the brown paper bag idea, we've chosen to just use brown and also to preserve the purity of the Southern Ice Paperclay, I've air-brushed the cups from an angle from the bottom and not blasted the whole cup. I'm not quite sure if I'm completely happy with them as is. I like the little snack dish on the right, the one which I had exercised greater restraint over, with the air-brush as you can tell. I'll have to think about the rest of them a little more.

However they are after all limited edition, designer tableware. Some of you lucky (haha) folks may be receiving one in the near future. And if I do become famous in the future, you already have one of my earlier works - so would you like me to sign them now?