5 questions: Little Clay Houses

I seem to be drawn to some of my fellow Canadian artists and artisans lately and wow are there ever a lot of great Canadian artists and artisans!

As I've mentioned here before, my goal for this feature is to put the spotlight onto some of the shops on Etsy that I have either spent my money in, or who I would love to buy from.

I initially came across the little red door shop through twitter, she's on one of my lists of super creative people and I've always loved her avatar. I've been known to laugh out loud to some of her posts but this feature is all about her super awesome shops and not her super awesome Twitter posts.

So I initially found her shop ages ago and then found her vintage and craft shops from there. Of her three shops SpaghettiJones is the least active with only one item for sale at this moment but her shop tag line is worth a visit and the cute robot greeting cards listed there really made me smile. Little Red Mercantile is chock full of amazing finds and well worth a visit.

When it comes down to why I love her shop I have to say that I just love tiny things. There’s something about the intimacy involved in both the making and the owning that really appeals to me. One of the main critiques I had in art school was my penchant for the small, while I’ve branched out size wise with my own work I covet it in others. From her signature tiny clay houses to tiny bowls, ninjas and an assortment of ceramic pendants and rings there is lots to choose from; and her colour palette is in a word divine. Plus, how enchanting would it be to give out tiny little clay houses as party favours for your next big event? Let me answer that for you: very enchanting.

As always each image in this article is linked back to Little Red Door's shop. See something you like? click on that puppy and get more information!

Can you describe the palette you use to create with, what colours do you always “reach” for?

I use mainly primary and other bright bold colours with white and black. I'm not a huge fan of pastels. My signature colour is of course red. I'm of the opinion that most everything goes with red.

Do you listen to music when you create? If yes, what's on your play list right now and why?

I listen to music all the time but most essentially when I'm creating. Without it, I'm in for a long lonely day of pottery.

My music collection is best described as varied. I like everything.
If I shuffle through my Ipod here are the next 10 songs that come up:

Sam Malone - City And Colour
Your Man - Down With Webster
Goodnight Goodnight - Hot Hot Heat
Rapture - Pedro the Lion
Hard Road - Sam Roberts
Tonight She Comes - the Cars
Time to Switch to Whiskey - Corb Lund Band
Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
Just A Girl - No Doubt
Walls Fall Down - Bedouin Soundclash




What got you started?

I've always been a maker of things, since I was in grade school. Embroidery since I was 7. Drawing & painting in my teens. Cross-stitch in my early 20's. Papercrafting & photography since my late 20's. I'm approaching 40 and I've been working with clay now 7 years. I am one of those people that must create. It's my raison d'etre. I think everyone should make something everyday.



If you were granted 3 wishes to furnish your dream studio space, what do you choose and why?

1 - floor to ceiling shelving
2 - packaging area
3 - lots and lots of windows

I think they're all self-explanatory

Which Children's book character would you be and why?

Little Red Riding Hood. She wore an awesome hoodie and loved to visit Grandma.

A Thousand Words

One of the things I'm working on

Carbon Neutral

Someone is always talking about how to lower our carbon footprint, how to live greener and how to change how we live for the better. Some changes are easier to make than others; the Husband's habit of holding the refrigerator door open while he pours himself a drink or when I forget to unplug the coffee machine in the morning for instance. We are still working on those.

I'm a firm believer in making small changes all the time. In the last year we've reduced how often we use the dryer; hanging our laundry out on clear days instead, we've reduced the amount of waste we send to the landfill by composting our food scraps and we've eliminated the cost of having a car; opting for the car co-op, our own feet and the local transit system to fill our vehicular needs. We turn off the lights whenever we don't need the extra illumination and we've started cutting back on how much water we use by turning the water off while we brush our teeth, and wash our hands. little steps that are adding up.

We still have more to do and I'm always thinking about what else we can start to do as well. So, today when I came across this initiative that will plant a tree for your blog or website
from German based kaufDA I jumped on board right away. The program has been set up to neutralize your online carbon footprint for the next 50 years and it's as easy as writing a post to participate. All you have to do is add a badge to your site, blog about it and let them know you've done so. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. It's free and it's a good thing to do! My badge is in the sidebar.

In other news, keep your eyes peeled on Friday for the latest installment of 5 questions! I'll be sharing another tutorial in the coming weeks and there are some works in progress that will be making their way onto a post near you in the future too. Hope your week is going well!

There is a soundtrack

So I've seen a few blog posts around here and there and even back that way which talk about all the things that kids these days (that makes me sound like an old curmudgeonly cranky granny lady doesn't it?) don't get, appreciate or will never get to experience.

While there are a few points here and there and back that way that I can totally agree upon, the anticipation of going to the record store to buy a new album or camping out in a mall parking lot to get tickets to a favourite band's live show for instance, or having the cute boy who works at the record store/ticket outlet get you killer seats for your first live show because he has a crush on you too.... these are things that I have done and remember fondly and also things that the Peanut will never get to experience for better or worse...

One thing that I've been thinking about lately is how we now have the power to choose the soundtrack that plays in the background of our day to day lives. The rhythm of our steps when we walk is timed to the beat of the playlists sounding in our earbuds. Of course because if the Peanut listening to music wherever and whenever is tricky, I don't want to miss out on her thoughts and observations or even her requests (because when she asks for a hug, that's a drop everything kind of request) I sometimes make do with one ear bud in and the other ear free. I get the best of both worlds here; music that suits my day, mood or activities and a free ear to take in the sound of traffic, the birds and the Peanut.

So my life has a soundtrack wherever I go, and it's poignant and moving and sing a longable and makes the time go smoother. Right now my soundtrack is stuck on a combination of Nada Surf, Greg Laswell and (as always) Depeche Mode. What song is playing in the montage of your life?

Shopping, an uninterrupted meal, poop and planting

are some of the things we did this weekend but I should explain, about the poop anyway, just in case you get the wrong Idea about what kind of blog post this is. We decided that if this weekend had at least one nice day we were going to transplant our seedlings into the garden. of course before that we wanted to spread the manure into the soil so our seeds and seedlings would have something good to grow on... so there was poop in our weekend.

I'm going to be honest and say that we didn't get everything in the garden that will eventually go in the garden; but by next weekend I plan on being exhausted, stiff and a little dirty. For now there are onions, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, watermelon and pumpkin and a nice hole ready for a raspberry bush sometime tomorrow rain or shine.

And yes I did manage a whole meal uninterrupted when the Peanut and the Husband went out after our family shopping trip for some father daughter bonding... heavenly.

How was your weekend?

Milestones should be celebrated

I've spent some time this morning going through some of my old posts and cleaning up my post labels and it's been a bit of work. I knew they were getting out of hand when the list of labels was way longer than the list of posts I've written. So I've chosen a handful of labels to help section out the blog. I'd love to have a custom blog with tabs to clean these things up but for now I'm doing this, a little at a time. I'm just hoping that I'm not clogging up your reading lists with old posts.

In a little under three years I've published over 300 times and it's been so much fun to do. And speaking of posting milestones one of the blogs I follow has an amazing giveaway to celebrate a handful exciting milestones both for her blog and her facebook page. Click on the picture below to find out more!

Where to start...

It seems I need to get a day job. Or at the very least an evenings and weekend job. Why? you ask. Well, a number of factors are place here: it seems that having the Peanut when we did and then waiting until I was staying home with the Peanut to start requesting interest relief has combined into a coming back to bite me in the hind quarters. Had it lasted just one more year, 12 short months then we could have had the Peanut in school and I would have time during the day to go to a part time job. But alas and also Hooray hooray this is not the case.

I say alas for obvious reasons, the timing sucks. Hooray because I now have the opportunity to start working off those pesky student loans and to possibly do it on my own terms...

A while back, I posted in the Etsy Canada Forum that I was available to do product shots and I've had a little interest in that direction. The trick, as always is to keep the interest growing. I'll be posting a new thread in those forums to try to drum up some more interest and hopefully bring in some jobs. In the meantime, I'll be bringing out the old resume and giving it a polish too.