Newest Ceramic Handmade Bird Buttons

 

Here is a peak inside the kiln today.  These are my latest bird buttons.  There are some turquoise, red and darker blue.  I can't wait for them to be cool enough to take out and get a good look at.  These are really simply glazed in a single colour but I think they turned out really well.  I've also filled in the spaces with a few small heart buttons.  I also had room for one of my speckled green and red Christmas coloured buttons.  I've got more of these speckled buttons glazed but haven't fired them yet.  Too bad I didn't get around to doing these in time for Christmas.  I think they are really pretty.  I guess I'll have a start on them for next Christmas.  I'm going to be putting all my shops on vacation mode tomorrow night until about the 21st of December.  I'm going to take a break from making buttons.  It's actually making me a bit anxious to put the shop into vacation mode.  I've never done it before in all the years I've had my shops.  If I've gone away or taken a break I've just put a notice up and indicated I'd ship out at a certain date.  Since it's so close to Christmas right now I've decided I'd rather risk losing a potential sale than have someone buy something and not realize I'm not going to the post office for a bit.  I'd really hate to disappoint anyone.  Well we'll see how it goes :)

Amost Time for a Break

 

I'm going to be closing up my button shops in the next couple of days - probably Monday night.  I'll list a few more buttons over the weekend but then will be closing up shop from December 10th until the 20th.  I don't want any disappointed last minute Christmas shoppers.  So while I've slowed down listing the resin buttons I've turned my mind to my handmade ceramic buttons.  The picture here is of some ceramic bird buttons I hope to get up just after Christmas.  These have the glaze colour on them but need to have the clear glaze put on and then they have to be fired in the kiln.  Ceramic buttons take such a long time to make.  They have to be shaped from the clay and then there is all that drying time that needs to happen.  These particular bird buttons have a very delicate tail on them which breaks very easily until they are fired.  I'm experimenting as I go.  I did fire a small kiln this morning and am waiting for it to cool so I can list some of these buttons.  I'm teaching myself ceramics so sometimes my experiments work and sometimes they don't.  No matter what I'm always learning so it's always fun.  Ceramics are certainly not an exact science so I know that I always need to make extra buttons because not all of them will turn out.  These birds will be orange, blue and turquoise.  I can't wait to see how they turn out.