Five and Under Feature

I am super excited to debut a new weekly item here at eschechtman.blogspot.com - Weekly posts that star new Etsy sellers that have had five or less sales.


To kick things off, I would love to introduce you to FlyCatcher Studio.

Flycatcher studio, which is based in Chicago, sells beautiful screen printed coasters. This shop opened only a few weeks ago and has yet to make a sale. I am sure that it won't be much longer though :)

Flycatcher studio may just be getting started and not have many items in the shop yet, but all of them feature well crafted and tailored designs, beautiful photography, and a great sense of color. Each 4x4 coaster is silk screened by hand with the artist's Gocco.



Isn't this calendar so beautiful?? I love the mustaches... it wouldn't be the same without them! According to the artist, "The 'bugman' series came out of a collection of doodles inspired by a distinguished moustache and how it can change the face. You may recognize some of these faces as world leaders and men that changed history, all while sporting their own style of moustache." - Neat! Like the rest of the items in the shop, this piece of artwork doubles as a coaster, though I don't think that I would ever use it as one. Regardless, I can only imagine that these would make a great host or hostess gift!



As of now, there are only coasters in the shop, but I hope that Flycatcher will expand to include cards and prints in the near future.


How can you not love them?
Please go and see this shop for your self, and give Flycatcher Studio the welcome that she deserves!

A few more fruit plates

Here is the finished under glazing on the pomegranate, fig, and plum plates. ... I am so in love with them, I am not entirely sure that I really want to sell them. I guess I will decide when they come out of the kiln.








These are tiles that I painted a bit earlier and am going to make into coasters. I was really inspired by this tile book that I got at the library. Tile is one of those mediums that is often overlooked, but there is some pretty incredible stuff out there! I have been especially into it ever since I figured out that tile is a lot easier to paint on and a hell of a lot easier to make than the thrown pots. Since painting has been more of my focus lately, this is a good thing.




Coolio, glazing is done on these 8 pieces! So, the next step in the process is to put clear glaze over the underglaze. I dab the glaze on first with a sponge because the dark colors, like my dark brown outline, can smear if you just dunk the item in without some padding. I screwed up a bit on the goat tile because I didn't stir the glaze enough before dipping it in, so hopefully the clear glaze will live up to its forgiving reputation. As anyone who works with pottery knows, this is often not the case with most glazes and they can also be unpredictable, so we shall see!



Btw, these are the squeeze bottles that I mentioned in my last post. I ordered them directly from Amaco, and they are a godsend! (And a relatively affordable one too).



You just have to make sure you clean them carefully after use cause they clog easily. I like to store mine with a pin in the needle tip to keep the paints flowing. I also keep a small funnel on hand to fill them.

Everything went into the kiln room today, so check back next week for the finishes! Hopefully they will be done by Thursday when I have class.... Joan, if you read this, that means load the kiln please? Pretty Please??? ;)