May 11, 2011

Don't Panic!

What do you do when the color combo your customer picked out just didn't live up to it's full potential and the clock is tick toking down to the wire? Dream for a light bulb moment!

These little lovely daisies were to have medium blue petals and a yellow center. The challenge being my lack of a nice opaque medium blue glaze. Lovely Tracie picked out a really pretty blue from my color chart that resided on top of a golden, very groggy clay. In my mind I would put the perfect amount of glaze to show the pretty blue but not chip off when applied with a heavy hand. "In my dreams" should have been the very next thought...



So here they are. Pretty but not what the Doctor (actually nurse in this case) ordered. My mind was a spinning/panicked! Do I fire up my huge kiln for 10 beads and try to mix a few of my glazes together in the hope that "the magic" would happen in the kiln?!

I was moping the floor, a very rare occurrence at my house, but when a bottle of sticky juice is spilled and the dogs track it through the house, you do what you gotta do. That is when that elusive bulb clicked on in my head! Many years ago I made my first beads with sculpey! It isn't my usual material but it is worth a shot! It is quick to bake and can be painted in any color you have at the ready! A beaders emergency dream! I'm no Heather Powers but my customer got what she needed and was very happy! It also felt really good to play with paint!



3 comments:

Silver Parrot said...

And the "dream" beads are super-cute, too! You should make more of those!

Spirited Earth said...

these polymer beads are cute..
and you've stated the real issue with doing custom orders in ceramics..sometimes it just doesn't turn out like you hoped and then what..a kiln can't just be fired next to empty with good results, it cools too quickly and other technical stuff.
although mayco stroke n coat has come to my rescue a number of times.

Lisa @FishyFaceDesigns said...

I love those light-bulb moments...heeheehee they can happen in the funniest of places! I really love how your beads turned out...cute cute cute!