A refusal to learn

Do you have a lesson in your life that you are repeatedly trying to learn? I do. The lesson that I need to learn over and over again is that I cannot glaze a kiln's worth of pots and do a bunch of glaze testing in one day. Ever since I installed my own kiln, I have been struggling to learn this.

It normally takes me about four weeks to make enough work to fill up my kiln for a bisque, because I only work about 10 to 15 hours a week in my studio. I then try to glaze all those pieces in one or two days. And every single time, this sounds like more than enough time, but nearly every time, I'm struggling to get it done. And I'm usually under some kind of deadline for custom orders or class assignments, so I can't just push the schedule back and glaze another day.

I don't know why I do this over and over. I did it again just this week. I have a surface treatment assignment due on Monday, so I plan to fire a glaze kiln Friday night into Saturday morning. I should have probably fired a bisque around March 13th in order to give myself plenty of time to glaze and mix some new glaze tests, but as usual, I didn't. I ran the bisque last Friday, and now have just one day to glaze everything. Why do I do this to myself?!

Positivity

I signed into Etsy this morning, and saw I had a new feedback comment. I clicked the link and here's what I saw:

"This seller was amazing! The earrings I bought for my girlfriend were high quality, and Michelle shipped them fast. I would definitely order from this seller again."

Feedback comments like this mean so much to me. Given the relative anonymity of the Internet, it's very easy to forget that you're still dealing with real people. When someone takes the time to tell me that they enjoyed our brief interaction, my heart gives a little leap. I try hard to make each transaction a nice experience, and I love knowing that this is being noticed. I've been fortunate in that I've had very few bad transactions on Etsy. The vast majority of my customers have been fabulous, and for that, I'm so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

A weekend with a master

It's Monday morning and I'm recovering from a two-day weekend workshop with the legendary ceramic artist Don Reitz. I love these weekend workshops at ACC, I've attended four or five now and they're always wonderful. Very often, I come away from them with ideas for new pots, and loads of information on tools and techniques. There's nothing like getting to sit and watch the way these brilliant artists work.

The Don Reitz workshop was a little different than all the others though. I didn't leave yesterday afternoon with a sketchbook full of new ideas and techniques to try. In fact, I didn't take hardly any notes at all. Instead, I was swept up in Don's immeasurable enthusiasm and passion for clay, and for its incredible qualities. Don and I make very different pots, and he's got forty years of pot-making on me, but I saw in him that passion that I feel in my heart for clay and the creative process.

My teacher Kathy specifically wanted me to attend this workshop so that I would be exposed to Don's confident mark-making abilities, his tendency to attack the clay surface with gusto and fervor. Using a variety of tools and his own bare hands, Don carved up his thrown sections, making slashes, crosses, indentations, tearing edges, and so on. I have been wanting to shake up the direction of my work, but I've found that I'm often scared of ruining an otherwise good pot with what I think will be bad marks or alterations. As a result, I make the same pots again and again, and they're not bad, but eventually I lose a bit of that passionate creative flame that drives an artist in the first place. Nothing kills the creative spirit like boredom, I guess.

Don is in his eighties, and he had not been to Colorado for a workshop since 1987, so it's unlikely that I will ever have the opportunity to be in his presence again. I'm so glad that I had the chance to spend a weekend with him, even as just a spectator, sitting in a plastic chair with fifty or so other clay fiends. I take away from this weekend my new mantra, Don's voice in my head saying what he said over and over as he feverishly played in the clay and tried whatever came to mind, "It's ok though. It'll all work out."

Testing...testing...

My camera is on its last legs, so I haven't really been able to do any posts about what I'm working on in the studio these days. Mostly, I've been doing my required assignments for my ceramics IV class and making a lot of test tiles for an upcoming surface treatment assignment. Here are some really crappy photos from my cell phone of my newest test tile-making method:

First, I roll out of slab of clay and cut it to be 10 inches long and 4 inches wide. Then I texture half of it with a bisque stamp (mine is a sort of pebbly pattern). To get that angled test tile shape, I then drape the long clay slab over the flap of a cardboard clay box, adjusting the flap inside the box to get the right angle.


After the slab has stiffened up a bit, I cut it into 2" tiles with a wire knife, and then use a hole cutter to put a hole in the corner of each tile. I also score a line into the inside bend of the tile, to make it easier to break off the unglazed base of the test tile after firing.


This leaves me with little square test tiles that can be hung up on nails or tied together into sets. I use a weird self-created shorthand to record the glaze information on the base of the test tile before firing using an underglaze marker, and then write the information again in Sharpie on the back of the finished tile. Once some of these are out of the kiln, I'll post a photo of a finished one. Hopefully all of my testing will yield some cool new colors and surfaces!

Getting Analytical

You Etsy sellers out there might have noticed recently that Etsy has made it easy to set up Google Analytics for your Etsy store. Analytics lets you track how many visitors come to your store every day, and how they got there. It's listed under the "Shop Setup" section of your Etsy store.

I've been using Analytics since about January 11th and it's been very interesting to see where visitors are coming from and how many people visit every day. Here are some of my observations so far:

-Being on the Etsy front page rocks! Of course, we all knew this already, but the data given through Analytics really supports that. My store averages between 40 and 70 individual visits on any given day, but on a day when I have an item on the front page, the visits shoot up to nearly 500! Even if no one buys anything on a front page day, they very often will mark my shop as a favorite and then come back to it at a later point.

-Relisting and renewing on Etsy really does drive your visibility. When I was on vacation in mid-January, I used a public library computer to relist a few times during the week, down from my normal 6 to 10 times a day. During that time, I averaged about 20 visits a day. The second week I was gone, I didn't have access to a computer, so I put my shop in Vacation Mode and only averaged about 8 visits a day. Once I got home and go back to my regular amount of renewing, my visits shot back up to the normal range. I guess you really do have to spend money to make money! I budget about $2.00 a day to renewing listings and do almost no other advertising.

-The vast majority of my store's traffic (about 65%) comes from within Etsy itself. The next big category is Google, followed by craftcult.com and twitter.com, which are two sites I know absolutely nothing about. I need to look into this and see why I'm getting traffic from these two places. I think knowing where people are visiting from really helps you figure out where and how to advertise online. My blog is #20 on the list, and my website is #11.

If you have an Etsy store and you haven't set up Analytics yet, I highly recommend it. It's really pretty easy and very eye-opening!

Rings Are Back!

Just a quick note to let you know that rings are back in the shop! My rings have been a hot seller since I debuted them last year, and it's been hard to keep them in stock. I still don't have all the styles in all the colors, but there are some available in the Rings section of my Etsy store, including this pretty cobalt blue one.

To create each ring, I first cut and shape porcelain clay into an oval or round shape, and then glaze each one with my signature reactive glazes. After the porcelain pieces are fired in the kiln, they get epoxied onto adjustable, silver-plated ring bands that have a pretty hammered texture.

Bridesmaid/Attendant Gifts

Last night, I was packing up an order of eight matching pendants for a bride-to-be who contacted me through Etsy. I do several bridesmaid/attendant gift orders like this every wedding season, so it has occurred to me that maybe I should offer a special wedding package deal.

So here it is: if you buy six or more jewelry items from my shop (matching or assorted), you'll get free shipping! Each item will arrive packaged in a pretty jewelry box, ready to give to the lovely ladies who are supporting you through your wedding.

Note: Each item in my Etsy store is listed as having a quantity of one item, but in reality, I usually have several of each item shown. If you need more than I have in stock, I'm happy to glaze some up for you and run them through the kiln. Sometimes it can take 6 to 8 weeks to make enough work to run the kiln, so try to let me know ahead of time!