I'm Going to School!

I need to clean up a few odds and ends here.

A few posts ago, I talked about the Silver Paste Class I took. You also may recall that my fabulous camera has pooped out on me, and is somewhere being fixed, I hope. So I took my handy, back-up, tourist, not-for-professional-photography-purposes camera with me to class, and snapped a few shots, and here we go!

The first step was painting several very thin coats of the silver paste onto the leaf. This photo was taken after 2 coats, before my gingko leaf started to reject the paste!

After all the paste is applied, the leaves were fired in the kiln. It is hot enough, and retains heat well enough, during this short firing period that the lid can stay off during firing.

You know I love to take the picture of the exact time the organic binder burns off! All the other students' projects are shown, too. Theirs are almost done, because they didn't have problems getting the paste to stick to their leaves, and they didn't have to keep starting over!

My finished gingko leaf looked a little plain, so I added an off-set garnet, and refired it. Also shown is my back-up geranium leaf, which broke during firing because I used so much paste on my gingko that I didn't have enough to adequately coat the geranium.

Most people can't tell the geranium leaf is broken 'til I point it out, but it is - there on the upper right, the leaf should curl up to meet the nicely curling fan on the upper left.

Meh.

And now a little business. Sales are booming over in my Etsy shop. (Yay!) I have several new things I'd love to list, but I can't, unfortunately, because I have no way to photograph them until I get my camera back. So I will keep relisting for awhile.

Meanwhile, I leave this Sunday for 2 weeks at William Holland Lapidary School. I love going to William Holland! There are so many friendly, talented people there, and I always come home renewed, refreshed, and full of new ideas, not to mention brimming with freshly learned techniques. I have never gone for 2 weeks in a row before (I attended for 4 weeks last year, but they were spread out), but with the price of gas, and the long drive, I decided to do it this way this year. My only regret about this arrangement is that Bailey will be at the "doggie hotel" for the whole 2 weeks (Ssshh - he'll hear us!)

I had originally planned to close my shop while I was gone, but have decided to leave it open, with an announcement that all shipping will be delayed until my return on May 26. I'll have internet access while I am there, and can check my shop, and my convos, so I will be able to stay on top of stuff.