Well Done Mrs Shiney

Mrs shiney thanks you all for your lovely comments and feels very humble :o.

When she was at school her teacher told her she was useless at art because she didn't do a good job of painting the pot that they had to copy. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that she went to local art classes for a year and then went to a couple of weekend courses at Flatford Mill run by the Field Study Council http://www.field-studies-council.org/

Much more recently she went for pottery lessons to a very good potter, Maggie Gardiner http://www.maggygardiner.com/index.html She was able to produce something good on her second lesson :thumb:. The classes were £10 for two hours and only paid additional money for items that were fired at the cheap rate of £2 per lb. Anything rubbish that was made was recycled and not paid for.
The vase was decorated by using blackberry leaves and ferns picked from our garden - just press them into the clay. Maggie was quite impressed as she had never thought of doing that.
This vase was done using a Savoy cabbage leaf



and she even decorated it inside and underneath




Mrs shiney now has another hobby as well. She works with glass and makes bowls, dishes, plaques, tea light holders, soap dishes, brooches etc. Although most of the work uses different pieces and colours of glas and chemical powders and metals they are all completely food safe as the are sealed between sheets of glass. The dishes and bowls are regularly used for salads and fruit as well as display. Her are a few examples:-

 

Thanks, Daisees.

She sells some in exhibitions and people that know about them buy them as presents. The brooches and tea lights are popular because they are smaller so are cheaper. The soap dishes she is making are a commission from someone who makes soaps and wants to sell the dishes as well.

She is now being approached by organisers of exhibitions and craft shows to have stalls there but we are usually too busy to do many of them. In September she will have some work in the Stebbing art exhibition. There are some others she is thinking about and will probably have a stand in the craft barn at the Thriplow Daffodil Festival.

Ebay is not really worth it for her because of the weight and fragility of the items.

 

Does Mrs Shiney have a gallery we can peruse online perhaps? Excellent work there which I'm sure many people would be interested in

 

Hi Kedi

I make all the large platters 38 cm diameter. That is because the mould is that big.
The cranberry bowl (29 cm diam) started life as a square piece of pale blue glass which turns cranberry when fired. As it was so expensive, I used all the "scraps" after cutting the circle at random on the circle. This produced pleasing darker patches on the bowl. My friend bought it as a anniversary present for herself and her hubbie! The black lines are glass "noodles" which you buy from the glass suppliers. You can snap them by hand into whatever size you want and they create another dimension. They have noodles and stringers. Strange names. The glass I use is float glass (as used for windows) as this works out much cheaper than Bullseye glass or other makes. The bubbles are achieved by using a pottery glaze called Copper Carbonate. It is very fine powder and you need a extra fine sieve especially for that. First, you dust some pale blue or pale green frit (glass powder) down, then dust the copper carbonate. Once it is fired, you get those lovely bubbles.......

websites you might like to browse: www.warm-glass.co.uk
www.creativeglassshop.co.uk

Kilns are expensive which is why I do workshops which are one day. I get a lot done in a day as I have the glass cut by a local glazier in advance (I know the sizes I need now) and I also get them washed and dried before I go to the workshop.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything else you want to know!