Welcome to Inside the Studio!
Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you’ll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner.
Congratulations Marlene Brady/ItsAllAboutCreating!
You have won a Tube Riveted Polymer Clay Bead from Mary Harding.
Please send Mary an e-mail with your information.
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Happy Friday!
My last Inside the Studio I shared my process of how I make buttons. This time I thought I would share the glazing process.
The design above is from my Goddess Collection of buttons. This is my best selling collection but also the most labor intensive. You could say a labor of love. Hours of labor.
I received an order for 200 buttons to go on a fall line of clothing. I have been making buttons for several years for this client and she is one of my favorite to work with. She herself is an artist and understands the time involved.
You get excited, YAY an order! Then it settles in that you you have to produce that order. I had to remake molds for 2 of the designs to make them smaller for her 1.25″ max button hole size. The one above had already been done for one of her previous orders. That itself is interesting to shrink a design and I was bored with the flat designs so I went dimensional. Yes, as artists we get bored easily.
The order consisted 4 designs from the Goddess Collection and 1 design from the Graphic Collection.
First color applied which is a wipe on wipe off technique used so you get an outline of the design. You then glaze inside the line. One instance you don’t color outside the lines.
Underglaze in progress. There will be three different background colors for this particular order. She gave me the color palette to be used for her fall line of clothing.
The magnifying glass my husband bought for me at an auction. Having one this large is definitely worth it. You can stick your whole face in it! Late at night I have caught myself doing that from being so tired. No more squinting as I glaze!
Underglaze is complete! Time for the clear coat.
Clear overglaze is applied. Button holes are cleaned out and the backs are wiped clean of any glaze. The buttons with stick to the kiln shelf is there is any glaze on the backside.
My baby kiln (Aim 88) is loaded and ready to be fired. Slowly take the temperature up. Bubbles and pitting in your glaze is not something you want to see.
Opening the kiln is like Christmas! A surprize every time.
The original 1.5″ design Morpheus button on the left. The 1.25″ redesign. Colors were changed to go with the customers color palette.
Some of the other buttons that were with the order. There were 5 designs total.
If you would like to order any that look different from the website just mention you saw it here. I need a total redesign on my website. I just haven’t taught myself InDesign yet.
*Remember any button can be a pendant or jewelry component.*
My Question is:
What is your labor of love?
Leave your answer to the question in the comments
and you could win a $10 Gift Certificate.
Have a great day!!
Feeling Sassy as usual!
Tari Sasser
Mary Harding
September 5, 2014 at 6:00 pmYour buttons are Amazing Tari!! What an order!! Yes, a labor of love and more!!
I am so impressed that you can shrink your design so well. And all those button holes to clean out!! Great work!!
Tari of ClayButtons.com
September 5, 2014 at 8:43 pmThank you so much Mary!!
Your work is pretty amazing too!
Carol Briody
September 5, 2014 at 10:09 pmYour buttons are gorgeous! Thank you for sharing the process. I love love the Morpheus design..and those swirl buttons are fabulous! So much patience to stay 'in line' and definitely worth every second!
My labor of love, with no hesitation…my 3 dogs…Mindy, Cherry and Poppy..this trio is so much fun to be with! They snooze right beside my feet while I'm at my beading table, faithful in every way, and for hours and hours…!
Katherine Thompson
September 5, 2014 at 11:11 pmThere are so many things that I love but my greatest, "Labor Of Love", would have to be my family and just like we mold clay I am hoping that the work that I put into my children to create beautiful adults is the most intensive effort I have ever made.
Kathy Lindemer
September 6, 2014 at 11:37 amI am amazed at the process! Your buttons are gorgeous. I love the goddess. Being one who appreciates great clothes, I would love to see what those bout tons are going on. You are fortunate to have found this customer.
My labor of love are my children who are adults now. I am very proud of how they turned out. I am not needed as much, but I am always there when called. I gave them lots of time and attention and it has paid off! I am a lucky person.
Divya N
September 6, 2014 at 2:39 pmwow – your creations are indeed the fruit of a labour of love. I would to think as my work both as a design professor and a jewelry as my labour of love as both are incredibly challenging individually and balancing them together is even so
Claire Lockwood
September 6, 2014 at 5:36 pmWow! What fabulous colours and fabulous buttons!
Claire Lockwood
September 6, 2014 at 5:36 pmWow! What fabulous colours and fabulous buttons!
Becky Pancake
September 7, 2014 at 12:07 amHi Tari. Thanx for sharing your process. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it. Your buttons are wonderful. My labor of love is the jewelry that I create. I am hoarding the button that I won from you with the snowflake on it because I cherish it. I do plan on using it as a clasp when I start making winter jewelry again this year.
Kristen
September 7, 2014 at 11:00 amI love the buttons! It makes me want to get out my sewing machine and make something that needs cute buttons like yours. My labor of love is my enameled pendants where I use a lot of shadings of colors and rubber stamped designs.
Shaiha
September 7, 2014 at 7:16 pmMy labor of love would have to be the jewelry that make up to give as gifts at Yule. There are ten women that I make jewelry for and my love goes into each design.
Tari of ClayButtons.com
September 8, 2014 at 6:59 pmThank you so much everyone for commenting!
I rarely get many readers commenting and I appreciate those who take the time to do so!
Colleen
September 9, 2014 at 2:31 pmDon't really know what my labor of love is, but I do know that I LOVE organizing my beads. Probably because I like looking at them, especially my extensive lampwork collection. I enjoy seeing your process here, though, because I don't work in ceramics. It's interesting how light the glazes are before firing. Your buttons are definitely striking.
Erin S
September 12, 2014 at 6:17 pmLabor of love: making mole from scratch, which takes FOREVER. (You didn't specify that it had to be jewelry related, so yeah, I went there.)