Despite my best intentions, this blog has fallen by the wayside again. Like a lot of people who enjoy making things, I’d rather spend time in the studio than on the computer. That said, I do enjoy looking at this blog as a digital diary so I really want to post more regularly. It’s true that Instagram also serves a similar purpose but this blog goes back so much further than my IG account.

Above are some images from things I’ve created in the past few months.

I had a lot of success with my octopus palette last year. People seemed to really enjoy it and I made quite a few. What’s interesting to me is how durable the round shape is. I sometimes get cracks in my rectangular palettes. It usually happens during the glaze firings and, after all the steps that go into making a palette, it’s very disappointing. Interestingly, I very rarely get cracks with the octopus palettes. Because of this, I was excited to try a couple of additional round designs.

The Ferris wheel was a fun, but challenging, design. Because of all the little car bumps along the perimeter’s edge this one takes a lot of time and patience to trim. For this reason, it’s a palette that I enjoy using more than making.

The whale palette was a design requested by a woman named Cayleena. While I prefer not to do custom designs, sometimes people throw out ideas for things that they’d love to see in my shop. I often sketch these up. If I come up with a sketch I like, it may turn into a tile or palette.

The last images are brush rest designs. The first is the chillin’ chimp. It was just a doodle-inspired design. The second is the turtles on a log brush rest. It was inspired by some photos I took at Green Lake here in Seattle.

Right now I’m in the early stages of a couple of new palette designs. They’re a bit of a departure for me but I’m excited about them. I’ll try to document the process for a future post.