Fresh Off the Kiln this Morning!

This is what my kiln looked like this morning through the peephole!

And this is what they looked liked when all beads were collected, touched, admired, played with, admired again, and put into this pretty dish I got the other day!

             Aren't they pretty?   

Giveaway Winner!

 The winner of the bird beads is!

Mary from Birch Bark Beads

I tried to get the widget from  random.org to show the winning number, but I'm sorry for some reason I just didn't know how to get it here.

The number chosen was number 4.  

Thank you all for entering, I will be doing another one in a month or so.

Mary, please email me at yolandasclay(at)yahoo(dot)com

Beads beads and more beads!

I have been busy with glazing and trying to make new work pieces and  jewelry in preparation for a show.  All this while I have a ton of things to do around and out of the house.  Plus taking care of my dog who the last couple months has been showing her age.  New things keep coming up with her symptoms, so trips to the vet have been often.  Her most recent and scary situation this week is that she has no control of her rear legs, she has little balance and walks like she is drunk.  The xrays showed she has the lower part of her vertebrae fused on three places.   So I am keeping an eye on her, she is on meds to help with inflammation, pain etc.  But if things don't get better, sadly I will have to make the decision
to have her put down.  In all other aspects she is doing great, she has an appetite, looks happy, wants to go on walks (but can't) and seems to be okay which makes the decision hard.

In the meantime here are some beads from the last firing, I hope to add more.  Hopefully I will have time to add some to my etsy store in the next couple days.

I will keep you posted on Sparky, hoping that she pulls through and is able to give me a couple more years of her companionship, love and reason to get out there with her.

Testing testing..... Reviewing Bead Racks

A couple months ago I bought a bead rack from Bisque Bead Supply owned by a clay buddy I met online years ago on the Beads of Clay group that we both belong to.

I am always looking for ways to make loading the kiln a little easier with  all the small jewelry pieces I make.  I have a small kiln that is  8" by 8" which by industry standards is known as a test kiln.  Saturday I decided to use the rack for the first time.  I put the high fire wire through one of the holes  and then loaded three glazed beads and pushed the wire to the other side and let it sit on the matching hole.  The rack has holes all along  the length of it at different heights.  So it's easy to figure out where you want your beads to be set  and how many per wire, all depending on the size  of your beads.  I also used one space to hang pendants from the top indentations, this way you make full use of the whole height of the rack.

The rack made the  loading easier than I had done before, I'm always having to reach all the way to the bottom of the kiln to set several wires along one row at a time, it can get tedious  and tiring after a while.  I took the rack to the table, beads on a plate and started filling it.  When I was done I picked the whole thing and put it in the kiln and voila' I was done.  The wires I used were about 7" long, this gave plenty of room for the wire to go across and pass the holes on the opposite side, and after I had filled the rack I realized if I play it well I can hang stuff on the outside too!  Note that if you put something on one end, make sure to put an item on the same wire on the other end, so the weight does not tip the item on the other side because the wire will be lifted a little bit until the hole stops it.  Basically use a balance approach.  The pictures above were taken before loading into kiln.

Rack has been set on top section of kiln 

The picture right above here you can see the left row is where I hung the pendants I talked about above, and also two pendants on the outside of the rack one on each side.  I want to point out also that putting these pieces on the outside (specially the pendant row because of its weight) will avoid sagging of the wire thus avoiding pendants to stick to rack floor.  For those of you who are not ceramic people, things to look out for when doing a glaze firing is that things cannot touch (or rack sides) otherwise they will stick together and will not be usable, you can also see that not all wires had items on the outside because they'd be too close risking getting stuck.

I really liked the bead rack. It's durable, small, stackable.  The size is perfect for my kiln, it was a breeze to fill up and load in kiln.   I am going to order a second one since they are stackable, two will fit just right in my little kiln.  I could see these racks be made in bigger sizes too, I think they could  be used with larger kilns where you could have several in one firing.  I do want to say that this load took fewer beads than I usually put in the kiln, but saving my back from being tired and in pain for the years to come, is worth it to me.  The price for the bead rack is $34.95 plus shipping.  You can get the rods to suspend the beads and pendants also at Bisque Bead Supply click Supplies on the left and it will give you the choice to check the different sizes and gauge.  The wire that I used to fire the beads is nichrome high fire wire, I buy this at my local supplier and it's gauge 17.

If you think you might want to save time in loading your kiln I'd say give this rack a try.  They are available at Bisque Bead Supply made by ceramic people and most of all it is made  in the USA.   You can also buy lots of bisque items that are ready to be glazed and fired, their selection is really big for lots of designs for your ceramic jewelry.  BBS is family owned by Marla James.

Please let me know what you think and if maybe you are thinking of getting one. Wednesday I will post my experience of the results of this firing, it was the first time I did a one time firing.... stay tuned for the results of the firing and close ups of the items pictured above.

What to make....

With so many techniques in ceramics, sometimes is hard for me to choose one.  While I love them all I constantly feel like I am pulled from every direction....  And to give myself some sanity, I try them all, even if it's one item per technique at a time. Here are a few I have been working with lately.







Owls are big lately, at shows I always sell a few at least.

I was finally able to get down and make some decals and follow through the whole process, while most pieces came out looking good a few were not so pretty.










So as you can see, I don't have a line of products that is all uniform, I don't have many of the same.  But I have fun stuff that I like to make and I make with the outmost care and quality there is.  Hope you like them.

You're it!!

Amy a friend from the CA Etsy group was very sweet in thinking of me by tagging me. I'm supposed to tell 7 interesting things about me, which will be very hard..I'm not interesting!?! but anyhow, here we go to give it a try.

1. I am the youngest of 9 children, born and raised in Tijuana Mexico. I have 4 brothers and 4 sisters and a whole bunch of nieces and nephews. I am blessed that my Dad is still alive, and unfortunately my Mother passed away in 2000. I miss her everyday and think of her a lot.

2. And after being raised among so many kids and always thinking that I would have a bunch myself... I have only one child, a daughter who is 17 and is a Senior in High School. Which comes to be sweet to only have one specially when you are dealing with the teen years...Wheww!!

3. I have worked in many fields from an assembler in an electronics factory, a florist, retail, property management (my longest job 16 years), as a realtor, and now a days I'm embarking into a new thing as we speak Medical Interpreter, let's hope I stick to this one for another 16 years perhaps.

4. I immigrated to the US in February 1983, my decision to come here was to save money to buy a car and then go back. Well, I loved it here so much I never went back and have decided to stay here for ever. I became a US Citizen In May of 1997. A proud moment for me, the memory of being at the LA Convention Center among thousands of people and taking the oath to be loyal to my new country will stay with me for as long as I live.

5. I have always been a crafty girl, I think I take after my Mom in that regard. I can remember going to the craft store with her as a little kid when raffia flowers were in, and when you'd make trees out of wire and seedbeads. She was always working on something, she was a good seamstress and always knitted and crochet. It wasn't until my young adult years that I realized how much I liked making things with my hands.

6. My clay endeavors started when I took my daughter 10 years ago to a clay class that her parental grandmother was teaching in Laguna Beach, and man I was hooked!
I started building a small studio little by little, bought a kiln then a wheel and have been collecting tools and what nots ever since. I started making jewelry two years ago and right after that started making ceramic beads and pendants. It's this year that I started doing shows, craft fairs, boutiques, and different sales with friends to sell our stuff. I am happy where I am right now with my ceramic's jewelry.

7. I consider myself a peaceful person, hardworking, fun and friendly, concerned about issues going on in the world right now, I don't like conflict so I'm pretty mellow, I like to read sometimes, I like to exercise sometimes, watch tv a lot,
Ohhhh,,,,I procrastinate a lot that's my worst quality.

Well there you go, you know a little more about me....boringggggggg.
Thanks Amy for giving a chance to look back.

Private Ceramic Jewelry Classess

If you live in the Orange County area in California, and would like to learn how to make your own ceramic beads, pendants and jewelry. I will start giving classes in a private setting, your place or mine. Email me at for further information.

Aardvark's Workshop Update

Last Friday was the second class of three were I am teaching ceramic bead making at Ardvark Clay in Santa Ana, CA. I have eight wonderful women take the classess, we made clay beads the first class, and this past friday we did the glazing. This coming is going to be putting our jewelry together.

Aardvark asked me to do another workshop in the summer, lasting longer than three weeks. I am working on a program where we have more time and choices on the fabrication of beads. We will continue the handbuilding and stamping methods, but I will also show how to make plaster and clay molds, slip casting of beads and also adding glass to them. This should be fun and can't wait for summer! also because I am tired of cold weather.

Have a great week and visit again. I will post some pictures later in the day.

Sad day

I'm sad to say that the firing I was waiting to open this morning was not that great, lots of pieces turned out
like poop. Time to have the kiln checked and calibrated. Ayy ay ay!

July 24th is the seventh anniversary when my Mom passed away. My brothers and sisters get together on this day and her brithday every year, we celebrate mass in her memory go to the cemetery afterwards and then go home and have a gathering celebrating her life, her cooking and her love for us. I still miss her a lot, she was the glue of our family and life has not been the same since she died. This year is extra special, my oldest brother and his family will be here, he is in the military and not always can be present. So, my eight siblings and our 30 children altogether along with my Dad will have a blast.
Here is a picture of my Mom, my daughter and me.

Working Working

I have spent the last two days working in my studio. I have all these ideas that are hard to contain in my mind. So, rather than writing them all I decided to make a few of each of those ideas. Working on rings, beads, some abstract pieces and pendants. Many are just molded and given texture with my hands with the help of little dryness in the clay already. Some stamping, written mesages, and also making new molds with founbd objects from my yard (and the neighbor's). I am getting into carving a few pieces, I have some way to go in this department. I have a glaze fire that ended this morning but it's still not ready to open, specially with the hot weather here in California. I will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Talking about hot weather, working in clay at this time is a race against time. If I get distracted clay dries too fast and things crack, that happened to two molds I made yesterday. So continuous covering of the trays and the everynow and then spray bottle action helps. But, no complaint about it, living here is just heaven....

Saturday I was gone for half an hour little after 9 pm to pick up my daughter from our local fair, went there picked her up, came back to a TP'd house. I have a beautiful big Jacaranda tree in my front yard, they covered it in paper like crazy! they even had the time to wrap my light post all around. Those kids... I have to say Christina felt somewhat happy about it, like she meant something to someone. We got the most of it right away because the sprinklers were ready to go on within minutes. We were lucky not to have all this wash down toilet paper on the grass.

I have a couple pictures here of a firing last week, this was fired to cone 5.
Some pieces were refires and for the second time they did not turn out the way I wanted. So to the pile of discards.

There is always a first time

I have been putting off doing a blog long enough. With the encouragement of my friends at the Beads of Clay Yahoo Group I'm feeling brave today. The main reason for this is to spread the word about our wonderful community of ceramic artists throughout the United States and other countries, and their creations of jewelry components such as beads and pendants as well as handcrafted jewelry pieces by many of them. Everybody's creations are different but all are beautiful. I will be adding in the days to come more information about the group, their blogs and websites. But, first I will start with mine since I know my info by heart. A couple months ago I got started with my first internet store, you can find me at www.yolanda.firedclayartists.com. This is my direct page which is hosted by www.firedclayartists.com and at it you will find many of my fellow ceramic amigas and amigos selling beautiful one of a kind pieces of clay goodies. Please visit us and enjoy our little treasures.

I will also use this blog to let you know a little bit about myself and my life, and how I have become involved in ceramics. That's it for now, until next time. Good Night.