Stuff...ing...

Oy Boy! I'm super chuffed (as they say in the old country) to announce  that I'll be teaching at the Cornwall School of Arts, Crafts, and Jewelry in Merry Old England next fall (that's 2015). So very excited. The last time I was in Europe was 1980 when my jazz choir performed at the Montreaux Jazz Festival. Our tour visited The Hague in Holland, Switzerland, a tiny corner of France (for a brief overnight stay in between gigs), Germany floating down the Rhine, and I think maybe Brussels, but not sure really. I also visited a couple of pen pal friends in Denmark (where I visited the inspiration for the castle in  Hamlet), but never got to Great Britain, Italy or France. So this gig is a return to the MotherLand, and my first long flight in over 30 years. Donna Penoyer is teaching in England and Belgium at the same time, so we're gonna take a few days to explore and make a real vaca out of it. Woo Hoo!
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CraftCast is having a 20% off sale just in time for Thanksgiving, so now is a good time to pick up my two workshops on Hollow Rings and Slip Printing (or slip stenciling as everyone else calls it). Just use the code "Harvest2014" when you check out. In each class I put together, I try to throw in a lot of extra techniques and tips, so these cyber classes really are almost as good as the real deal (an in-person learning experience). And as a little teaser, I'll tell you a little something that I thought of in a recent texture class here in Richmond. Slip Printing makes use of stencils - the kind you use with paint to decorate your walls or scrap books. You can buy them commercially - or pierce them out of thin (26 gauge or thicker) brass with a jewelers saw. But as I was demonstrating to my students, I thought of another way to use a stencil.

• Roll the clay out to the desired thickness with no texture.
• Place the stencil over the clay (and spacers) and roll again. Voila! A fancy design pressed into your clay! This is the way I created the texture for the Hollow Sculptural Form bracelet I'll be teaching in England.

• Now comes the brainstorm - for even more impact, roll with no texture as stated above, then lay the stencil over the clay, THEN lay a piece of lace, skeleton leaf, or other thin, flexible material over the stencil and roll. Now you have a double textured design! So cool. And so easy.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of this technique to illustrate the modification. I'm a bad teacher. :\  Forgive me. But it's really cool. Take my word for it, and then try it out for yourself.
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It's Thanksgiving here in the States, and I'm really grateful for all of my followers, friends, students, and fans that visit this long neglected blog and still have faith in me. Have a wonderful feast with friends and family - even if it's not your national holiday too.