A good day for raku

Today has been a good day!

Decided to do a bit of raku today, as the weather was at least dry, if not sunny.  Some die hard ceramists will tell you that you cannot raku during the winter months, but we have never found a problem with it.  Maybe it is the reasonably mild climate in the South of England that helps.....who knows.

Anyway, about a week ago I had glazed some tiles with a picture of an old ironmongers in Havant, Hampshire, that has been empty since the end of 2007 (I think).  The building is looking a little neglected now, and it's once beautiful clock has fallen into disrepair with a big hole in the bottom.  But I think, for me, the most poignant part of the picture are the Christmas lights still hanging from when the store was closed for the last time.......This road in Havant has now become a bit of a ghost town, with many of its shops boarded up.

So today was the day that the tiles were raku fired.  Here is the result!

My Inspiration photo

Going selling (hopefully) tomorrow

Oh my word, what a busy week!!!! Been getting 'stuff' made for our first craft fair of the year tomorrow.  It's the first of a new monthly makers market being held at The Spring Arts & Heritage Centre, East Street, Havant, Hants

Copper Foiled hanging Heart

We thought we would take along some smaller things like fused glass fridge magnets, and copper foiled hanging hearts, seeing as Valentines Day and Mother's Day are coming up.

A selection of our fridge magnets

My daughter has been unemployed for a couple of weeks (she started a new job today!) and has been making patchwork padded hearts and matching greetings cards to compliment our range of hearts.  So we will be giving these an outing for her tomorrow to see what sort of response they get.

Matching heart and greetings card

Beautiful padded patchwork hearts

Hopefully there will be a fair amount of footfall, as The Spring has clubs etc going on during the day, and also I think the event has been well advertised. We shall see, fingers crossed!