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Handmade Christmas

A handmade Christmas should start around July, not November. Here are some of my nativities. I had 6 people on my list that I wanted to make the standing nativities for. I made 2 extra big ones and 3 smaller ones and several nativity tiles- but when you work with clay you have to expect surprises. Here is a sample of my work. I was so rushed that I forgot to take pictures before i gave them all away. Hopefully i won't be too excited to give the rest away and can get Sarah over to do a photo session of them.
I plan on making these until each family member has one- and when I get them again I will begin making the additional figure- or make them dish sets if I have a wheel- what ever they want.
Nativity Tile. (Sorry, blurry) Terra cotta clay with celedon glaze (first glaze fire) and then black wash (second glaze fire) .

Earthenware nativity with iron saturate wash. Love it
nate thought it would be good to have a dark backdrop- so they held up jake's jeans.

Here is my experience this year. Much is to be learned about this stuff.

• One nativities broke too much to be recovered while being driven to the kiln at my Mother's house. The Joseph is still in tact and can be used in another nativity.
• Next time I need to transport them while still leather hard and not brittle- or better yet..GET MY OWN HOUSE WITH KILN SPACE!!!!
  
• One whole nativity has been glazed 2 times and is still ugly. It will be glazed again in the next firring.
• Did not make a baby Jesus for one of my smaller nativities (not pictured)
• Broke the 2 other babies for the 2 other small nativities while loading the kiln
• One small nativity lost a mustache- i think i need to toss that Joseph- but not until i make a replacement.
  
• put an ugly celedon glaze on 2 of the nativities. One is a larger one that no one took- both will be re glazed.
• Need to make a custom nativity including elements of other nativities minus the ugly celedon glaze for one family member (happily- i want them to love it and i like making them)
• need to make another Mary for a nativity that crashed to the tile floor after being opened on Christmas Day.
  
• need to make one more nativity for my sister in law that gave me an i-pod- after realizing how much they cost i told her i'd pay her back with pottery- she can pick exactly what she wants.
  
• Made some ugly nativity tiles. I won't make them again, just the pretty ones shown

Things I have learned:

• Start earlier much much earlier.

I plan to sell these on my etsy shop and at Bohemia in Tuscon. But if they are to be priced the same as my other pieces the larger nativities will be around $100. So I think I'll make a few of those and then a lot of Tiles. I think they can be around $15 or so and then I'll make some smaller nativities that are not so labor intensive and sell them for less than $50. (umm...there is a family/friend discount- very generous discount for those who have been asking about buying nativities).

Handmade Christmas

This year we (and by "we" I mean "I"**) are doing a

Handmade Christmas

well for some of our gifts.

Now that I have a kiln I am making some Nativities that I've been thinking about for years. Some of them are based on a Nativity from Venezuela and others are just my own ideas. I have found out that if you are planning on doing a nice handmade Christmas you should start in July.

If you have a big family.

These pieces shown are in progress and the 2 people we have on Nate's side don't know who they are until Christmas.

It is a sort of Secret Santa sort of deal.

So any family members that look at my blog and see the progress can just hope that I have their name .

(hopefully they want my nativities... I hope they don't think socks would be a better gift!).

My sister knows that I'm making her stuff and has said it is ok, she does not know which one of these she is getting, and it could be one that I have yet to make. And, besides, these will look very different once they are glazed. So I don't feel guilty for posting pictures of gifts.

I'll post final pictures.....after....Christmas....maybe.

This is what my house, or at least the couch, looked like on Friday,and I still had about 3 more loads of laundry to wash, but I wanted to get a bunch of stuff glazed as well.
**I should give Nate some credit in the gift making. He watched the kids so that I could make the gifts. It is hard to do a good Nativity with a 2 year old crawling on your back.

Sunday Morning Activity

I am an Artist. (or at least i try to be)
I have an A.A. in Fine Arts and a B.S. of Fine Arts in Art Education.

Although I am an Artist-I'm mostly a MOM.
As stated before, we don't go to church until 1:30pm on Sundays- so we try to make the most of that extra family time. The kids like to play with clay- but it is messy and I can't always get it out every time they want to play. Last night I decided that we would play with clay on Sunday Morning as a family. .. and so we did. (Nate's back is out- so he took the pictures and tried to clean up- but did not participate too much).
I did however get to make this Joseph to go with the Mary that I made a few weeks ago. They are hanging out with the mixer.