Mama said there'd be days like this...

I was so pleased with myself for getting so much done this weekend, and then...

Yesterday, the glaze firing went perfectly. See the firing cone on the left, this is exactly how it is supposed to look at the end of the fire. Bent over lightly kissing the floor of the kiln. The items from this first firing came out gorgeous, a new glaze I used really surprised and delighted me on one little Sake set (will have proper pictures later), and pretty much everything else turned out just the way I wanted it to also.


Today's firing....the cone on the right completely melted to the kiln floor and even took off a layer of the actual kiln when I removed it! I have never seen anything like this, and can't imagine how I over-fired by this much. I am the "kiln sitter" for the small test kiln I use for the miniatures, and normally, I am watching/paying attention to the actual hours besides using a wind-up timer. Must have lost track of time some how...

Good firing...

Bad firing...

The bad news to me is, most of the best vases were in today's "bad" firing. The good news is...I think most of the pieces can be saved with new glaze and re-firing. Not sure though...because the clay itself turned into something else. The little trays I had with the melted glass warped, and the glaze on almost everything sort of melted off. Will be giving it a try tomorrow and hope for the best.

Miniature Cats and Their Afghans!

I am very slow getting this post up, because I've had it on my plans for weeks now! Earlier I showed my fabulous cat family that my friend Hanna made for me in miniature, but I hadn't shared that now these precious babies all have their own afghans (just like the real cat family does), made by Frieda of Willowscreations.

These pictures are not the best, and I will also be recovering the furniture in plain colors later, but this is the best I can do to simulate a real scene in my livingroom, (the real livingroom), as it often is with the cats and their own personal afghans.



You can click on these pictures to get a larger version! Just found that out right now, when I tried it :)


Frieda makes all sorts of lovely crocheted miniatures, and you can see a few from her shop in this Etsy mini:



Hanna makes all kinds of animals, and you can see in the Etsy mini for her here:

Dollhouse Project

A few weeks ago I decided to finally put together a dollhouse kit I've had sitting around gathering dust for several years. The kit is called The Buttercup, and looked really easy if you follow the instructions and put it together the way it's supposed to go.




Looks really cute, doesn't it? How about the inside...look how it could be! I wasn't planning to make a shop out of this kit, but it would be great this way.



Well...first I did start putting it together the proper way, with the instructions. I got it basically put together, then got out a dollhouse scale doll because a couple of things were bothering me about the shell of this house. First, she had no way to get upstairs, because there was no stairs, and even if there were a set of stairs (which I decided to steal from the other dollhouse kit I have still in the box), once she got there, she couldn't stand up! So even though I'm a complete novice on building a dollhouse, I was going for a remodeling job right away. This is the start of my changes...


I let it sit this way for a couple of days, kept looking and thinking about this, and finally decided my altering just wasn't going to work, so I took it apart. The mangled kit pieces are back in the box now, and I got a new plan :)

One night when I was browsing the miniature listings on eBay, I found this fabulous roombox/house!





Isn't it fabulous? I won! I have this little house now, and though it won't be a living room/kitchen/everything room....eventually I think it's the kitchen, it's a great way for a beginner to start! I will use this as my livingroom setting for now, and build on to it later.

Next post will be a long awaited picture of the cat family with their own afghans :)