Monday morning tonic + inspiration + a surprise ending
This morning was especially beautiful and since the construction guys had yet to get into full swing, I took my morning tonic out on the deck ... lovely. For the last couple of weeks, I've been starting off most days with yoga, maybe a short meditation and this delicous elixir . . .
It's basically a less intense version of the Master Cleanse concoction. In a wide mouth quart jar I squeeze the juice of one lemon, add a hefty pinch of cayenne and about a tablespoon or so of grade B maple syrup - all organic. I add 16 ounces of hot water and then fill with cool water (all filtered) and drink slowly. It's enormously comforting and super yummy + it's supposed to be really good for me.
Being Monday, there were errands to run and checkbooks to balance, but then it was back to my worktable to snap a couple of pics of the pinch pot progress.
stained earthenware pinch pots, top
stained earthenware pinch pots, bottom
I'm still debating as to whether I like the stained pots just as is or if I'm going to doctor them up.
I definitely wasn't crazy about the pink one, so I pulled out my collection of gilders paste and started playing around. I've been thinking about this for awhile and I'm a huge fan of Grey Bird Studio ... she's an absolute genius with this stuff. I can see that figuring out how gilders paste works ... layering of color, varying the intensities, thin or heavy applications and on and on ... well, it's going to be utterly addictive. Most of the instructions I've seen call for using petroleum based solvents or other seriously stinky/toxic stuff to thin it out and for cleaning up. I feel so fortunate that my initial research led me to the Cool Tools site. I'm using Cool Tools Cool Slip for thinning and cleanup - very awesome product and works extremely well. The paste is sort of stinky on its own, which makes me glad it's the time of year I can have the windows open and the fans going while I work.
My first attempt with using gilders paste on earthenware ...
gilders paste, Cool Tools Cool Slip and pinch pot; inside layers: damson, iris blue, coral red and verdigris
outside layers of African bronze, iris blue, coral red, verdigris, damson
The little pot now looks very jewel-like and I still want to do some more buffing, but I will say straight away ... I am one smitten kitten! All Earrings & Supplies on Etsy has great prices and super reasonable shipping on the paste.
So here's the surprise ending part ...
I have a bit of a stash of discontinued jewelry samples and experiments and this's and that's. Hopefully later this week I'm going to list them here on a special sale page - 50% off! For those on my mail list, I'll be sending out an announcement for the sale which will include a link to that special page. This is my incentive to figure out how my newsletter feature works. Of course, I know there's plenty of peeps who cannot bear to sign up for one more list, so after a couple of days, I'll make the sale page available to everyone.
If you want first dibs on the goodies, sign up for my newsletter here. If you're okay with waiting a couple of days, I'll be blasting the link here on my site and on FB and PInterest.
Stay tuned and wish me luck!
l i g a - kvk