Saturday, March 29, 2008

New Items in my Etsy store

The etched items are now up for sale in my Etsy shop. The skull at the left is the next mug ready to go in the kiln!

The things kids worry about...

The other night Ethan (3 1/2) pointed to my eyebrow and asked, "What's it called?" An eyebrow. Then he started rubbing his forhead and got really upset and started shouting "I don't have one!!!" I had to hold his finger and rub his eyebrow and say here it is! Then he said Oh, hehehe... Oh my goodness, I laughed so hard!

Haven (10) and I have been having this ongoing discussion about why she doesn't have to worry that I'm going to run the car into a ditch when we take the back road between Patch and Panzer barracks. She chants to herself, "Mommy is a good driver. We're not going to run into the ditch. There are poles on the side of the road to stop us. Although they are far apart... and our car would fit between them... but NO. We're NOT going to run into the ditch." Right. I tried to tell her that she shouldn't worry so much. That I've been driving for 12 years now. That if it's our time to die we'll go to Heaven and everything will be good. That's not working. So I told her if she worries too much she'll get an ulser. Yes, I know I'm a bad mother. Now she says, "If I worry in my head and not out loud will I still get an ulser?" Yes, of course. (Shut up.) Then she says, "You shouldn't have told me that. Now I'm going to worry about worrying and I'm going to get a hole in my stomach! Does that hurt?" I give up.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Etsy Sale

Yeah!!! I finally made my first sale! So did Corinnea! (It was a joint effort!) We sold a set of hair clips and a loose flower. It's so encouraging!!! My sold items doesn't say ZERO anymore!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

And so we did! Friday night was the first Ladies Night Out Pottery Painting Evening. There were nine of us alltogether and we all made the girliest little bustiere vases and high heeled shoe cell phone holders! So cute and so fun! I did some more experimenting with my new sgraffito technique. I really like the effects.
Click here if you want to see pics of all the projects.

Verbing

We had lunch with some Hungarian friends on Saturday. They are really interesting. They are Hungarian Jews. Hungarian MESSIANIC Jews. Hungarian Messianic Jews who live in Germany. It's so cool. So anyway one of them started teasing us because Americans have this tendancy to make verbs out of nouns. I have to admit, I am totally guilty of doing that! So I decided to give it a name: Verbing. I really think Americans have turned this into an art form! While she was teasing us I couldn't actually think of any words that I use, but then later in the course of conversation I said something about needing to Janitor-ize something. I chuckled to myself. Today it was Mosaic-ing. Start listening to yourself and comment me if you find yourself verbing! I want to know if this truly is an American art form, or if it's just me!

Sunday, March 23, 2008

He is RISEN...

He is risen indeed! Yes, it's Easter, the most important holiday of the Christian faith. Rob went out for the SonRise Service (see Son... it's a play on words. Get it?) but I didn't think I could handle the hike at 6 am. Plus it was snowing. Rob said it was gorgeous! While he went up with the others I got the kids ready and then when he got back we went to breakfast with my Sunday School class and then to the service. It was a very nice morning. Then we had our traditional lamb lunch and the traditional Sunday nap! :)

The cute thing about Easter was explaining it all to Ethan. See, he's in bribe phase. That means in order to get him to do something you have to bribe him. Well, last night I said he had to go to sleep so the Easter bunny would come and bring candy. Oh man! Wrong thing to say! His eyes got HUGE and he said, "What?! Candy?!" This morning it was, "Is Easter in my house? Did Easter bring me candy?" How cute! No, Easter is not a person. It's the day we celebrate Jesus' resurrection. Well that's not easy to explain to a three year old! Especially when you want him to think killing someone is bad! How can it be bad if they come back to life? Gee! So, anyway it was cute. But of course it beg's the question: what will happen when YOU die? To steal some lyrics from my favorite Christian band (these guys) "Do you know where you're gonna go? Straight to Heaven or down the hole?" Deep thoughts!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Whadya Think

Do you like the new layout?

Inked Up Mugs II

Ok, here's the after firing look. The etching came out beautifully but you can see the white is very gray. Katelyn saw it when I took it out of the kiln and said it looked like a raku firing (which of course is very cool) but I want to figure out how to get the white opaque. Because sometimes I'll just want it to be white! The pieces were still too hot to take out of the kiln, but this one was at the front and I got it with gloves and put it on a kiln shelf to cool. So I can't show you the other pieces yet.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Inked Up Mugs

Ok, I sounded much too sorry for myself in that last blog. So I did something creative... for the last five hours or so. I had been wanting to experiment with layers and wax resist for awhile but kept getting too busy. Plus I didn't want to ruin a good piece of pottery. So I found some broken bits to play with.

This one I painted black then painted on wax resist in the swirl pattern then painted over with white glaze. (The wax pen was total crap.) Then on the backside I started experimenting with other ways to get this same result, but easier or better. Then I came up with scratching through the white glaze. My next sampler is a broken mug.

I was REALLY happy with the results of this mug so I thought I was ready to move on to a real mug. I got the design from istockphoto. The latte mug (below) is an interpretation of two graphics off that website. (One mug, 3 views)

Of course this is PRE-firing. I'll put after pictures up when they come out of the kiln. Tell me what you think! (But don't be harsh about the red band... I know.) Oh, and it's called Inked Up Mugs because I did a search for "tattoo" on istockphoto.

blog blog blog

Ugh. Yeah it's been too long, but I just haven't felt like blogging about myself. I still haven't sold anything on Etsy and the views have all but stopped going up. It's made me really bummed. But I'm hoping to sell some things at the VIP arts and crafts evening in May. So I've been spending my energy on other things. I made a really nice album out of velvet and our new Japense paper, I started a government computer friendly mini-blog on our MWR website (here) to start spreading the word about our real blog (here), and I created a cool website for our Vacation Bible School where kids and volunteers can sign up online.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Flower Headbands


These are the flower headbands Corinnea and I have been making. It started with Corinnea putting some on a hat. I loved it, but wanted to change the flowers with my outfits. I suggested she put buttons on the hat to change the flowers out. She did... but she gave it to Mary! Grrr.... That's ok because I found these stretch headbands and put the buttons on them. It's so much fun doing this little project together. I wear them around and people want to buy it! We've sold two, taken an order for one, and I gave one to Julie (see the blog under this one). I've got them on my Etsy site now for anyone who wants to order some! www.kellyskorner.etsy.com


Sunday, March 9, 2008

Northernstate and Tegan & Sarah

We went to go see Tegan & Sarah last night in Heidelburg. This was our third time to see them and it was a GREAT concert! We stood right behind the sound board, which was the best spot for the sound and fun because we got to watch him use a computerized sound board. What I didn't know was that they had an opener this time. It was this white girl rap group called Northerstate and they were SO FUN! They had tons of energy and their lyrics were fun and they all had great voices (which you know you don't always get these days...). Anyway at one point they asked if anyone was wearing the clothes they had on. AHH! At that moment I wished I was wearing SOMETHING I made! One of the halters, or a skirt... but I DID have on one of our headbands! Between the sets I went out to the merchandise table and Julie (one of the rappers) was there. I told her Corinnea and I were making these headbands and she said if I gave her one she's wear it on stage! So I'm down another headband! I figure... promotional expense! Anyway, we had so much fun!

Friday, March 7, 2008

Beer Coaster Books

I finished my first Beer Coaster Books and I think they are so fun! I only have a cutterbee paper trimmer here at the house, so I got three done before I was sick of cutting the pages. I'll use the big guillotine paper cutter at the church to cut the rest of the pages. I can't wait for the big paper edger to come in so I can round the corners! (Of the inside sheets. The coasters are already rounded!) I added glitter to the one on the left to give it a little more color.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Beer Coaster Books

I had this fun idea to make little notebooks out of coasters. But I hadn't been out to eat in forever so I didn't have any coasters yet! Well, Corinnea, Martha and I went out for Greek last night. How many in the house know what that means? You got it! The owner had started drinking WELL before we arrived! So after an interesting game of shuffle the coasters, which ended in him giving me a stack of them... I now have a nice collection of coasters to begin my project. Hehe!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

the Joys of Motherhood

So Ethan (3 1/2) said his first curse word. Well... relatively speaking. It was the cutest thing though. He knew he was going to say something naughty so he got kinda bashful and screwed up his face, and barely moved his lips and said "poo-poo." Do you know how hard it was not to laugh! I just pointed out that that was not a word we should use that way. LOL! The other day he told me I needed to calm down. Calm down?! Do you know how many questions the average toddler asks in one day? 437! Calm down?! Haven learned the value of money this week. Her cotton candy machine that she bought on her own of course DIDN'T work like magic as the box indicated. Life's lesson? Don't buy anything that says "works like magic" on the outside of the box!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Cathedral Garden Quilt Club

I started this quilt about four years ago, but then I took a full time job and had a second child... so you can imagine how far I got! Well I pulled it all out and convinced three other suckers (just kidding!) to do it with me! We had our first meeting on Thursday and I got one block done. I think there's about a million in the quilt! It was fun to get started again and trade fabrics with my friends. But the most fullfilling part was that my three friends were so excited to make the quilt! Two of them had never paper-pieced before and they both really enjoyed it. So I thought I was doing the quilt for my own selfish reasons, but as it turns out the fun of making it is going to be more rewarding than the quilt itself!

ETSY

I just opened my ETSY shop! I only have two items listed so far, but I'm working on getting more up. Just go check out the site and see what you think! http://kellyskorner.etsy.com