Sarah Jane with her Christmas Tree!

Sarah Jane came to visit the other day after she had been to kindergarten, and gave me the tree she made that morning. Wasn't I fortunate?
She has an eye for colour as you can see . . . . . I love that, as I love colour also.

Christmas dish

Each year our club has a Christmas Exchange, and this is what I did for our 2011 exchange.
The edging is called "Fools Gold" which was applied with a holey sponge. The outside of the dish has the same edge. I purchased a small candy cane which I will pop in the dish just for a surprise when the person opens the little parcel.

I hope they like it!

Heart Shaped Dish

I painted this 4" dish after I came home from Queensland, and had purchased some matt black powder . . . . so what to do with it? !

The edge of the dish is carmine lustre, the black is my new matt black powder, and the burnishing gold has black pen work on it to take the plain-ness off it.

I really like this piece!

Daisy Box

This 3" box has a rather heavy lid doesn't it?>

This 3" box has a rather heavy lid doesn't it?

It was a class project at the club I belong to - most of the girls did much smaller boxes but as I had this one unpainted in my cupboard decided to use it.

The lid has heavy enamel put on it with a spatula and when fired was covered with a product called Fools Gold.

The base and lid of the box was covered with copper lustre and after firing covered with weeping opal around the daisies. After firing this is the result . . . . quite pretty really although I tend to think the lustre looks like it has run and is a bit of a mess! I am hoping someone will want to buy it . . . . or I might find someone I can give it away to. Is this you?

Basket with weeping opal

This is the first time I have used weeping opal. I like the look on the finished piece!
The basket has had 2 coats of carmine lustre, fired in between of course. Then I covered the lustre with liquid bright gold and when it was "tacky" I brushed on the weeping opal and let it run how it wanted to. After it was fired at 800 degrees, the liquid bright gold was applied to the I-Relief and fired at 780. This makes a nice edge around the painted squares.

Bird with raised paste border

At last I have finished the plate I began at the Nerang, Australia school in class with Louise Hopping as tutor.

I needed a magnifying glass sitting on my chest to see clearly to cover the tiny dots with a fine line of burnishing gold. Before the gold work was dry I applied gold powder over it, which gave the paste a lovely rich gold look.

But remind me not to use such small dots in future!

Watch this space!

The last 4 or 5 weeks have gone by so very fast! I have just come back from Australia where I attended an exhibition of Australasian Porcelain Art Teachers' work. The work was stunning and I saw so many things that I want to paint adapting to my own style.

Following the exhibition I attended a school, and the class I took with Australian Louise Hopping was great. We painted a small fluffy bird in the middle of the plate and then surrounding it with raised paste (our own designs) and also many hundreds of dots around the edge of the plate.
I am no where near finished the plate; it needs at least another 2 fires. As soon as it is finished I will post it on my blog for you to see.

I am also working on a couple of smaller things, and will post those too.

So watch this space! And I am sorry for the length of time with no new postings.