A crazy bowl , a bejewelled bird ..and 30 bottles of paint in a shoebox

Recently I was reading this post from Once Upon a Tea Time and took an instant flight down memory lane...
Joe is known to be the creative guy in the family .. and me, I could hardly draw a straight-line. I had never tried my hand on any arts or crafts till my marriage..and just went on with my notion that "it-is-not-my-thing". However, after we got married and I got here..we were on the lookout for new apartments to rent . After seeing any apartment ( most of them would be empty at the time), Joe would come back home and make me a sketch on how each room would be like , once we furnished it . I was so impressed by his artistry.. also feeling a tad disappointed that I couldn't impress him with anything of that sort.

Around this time we got a flier about the various classes offered by the city.. and ever-so-enthusiastically I enrolled myself for a class on "Ceramic Painting". Being the,sweetest guy that he can be, Joe wanted to go with me for the class an we ended up taking the class together. While the rest of us were trying to negotiate the basic techniques of painting bamboo shoots or flowers, Joe was busy trying to impress the teacher with his "brush-less painting"( he would just put a blob of paint on the tile and then jut keep tilting it till it made a design). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of those ..I would have loved to share it here.
Anyway.. the end of the story is that.. I finally learned a craft. I was so thrilled .. I was painting on everything i could lay my hands on.. tiles, cups, plates any glazed surface at home was subject to my artistic explorations :)
This is a a crazy-bowl I painted.It was a little bit more difficult than I had imagined because of the curved surface; you can see that some of the paint has puddled in the center.

Below, is one of our better creations. It is the depiction of a Byzantine bird on a 12"X12" floor tile. It took almost an entire day for both of us to do this ..from making the stencil to adding the multiple layers of paint. The copper tones border is actually layers and layers of thinned down paint applied and dried using a hair-dryer to get the smooth eggshell effect.The inspiration picture is from one of the tile decorating books. We are yet to figure out a way to showcase this .. if you have any suggestions please feel free to comment.

A little bit on the paint used: We have used Pebeo 150 , a non-toxic water-based paint for all the ceramic and glass painting. After the paint is dried, you just set it in the oven for 30 min in 300F and the artwork stays permanent on the surface.

Random Clicks

These are some snaps from our everyday life , random objects at home...putting the camera to some use :) Nothing in particular...

Our Tewa Horse from Trail of Painted Ponies. When we got him, we were all set to start a collection. Then Blu came along and needless to say.. everything else took a backseat. Hope to get a few more ponies from the fabulous collection in future.

A brass candle-holder with Andalusian(Moorish) cutouts. It's really nice to see the flame glowing at night, so I hope to have another posting on this sometime in future. Surprisingly, we didnt have to make a trip to the exotic Casablanca to get this one- its from a favorite local store-Target!

An impromptu table-scape (above). The branch above fell off from one of the plants in our tiny garden.. the flowers looked so fragile, we felt like saving them in a rescued Starbucks Cappuccino glass bottle. Some things in the background include our distressed black farm-style table, and a graceful platter from one of our trips to Filoli (we will have a post on Filoli soon).

Can u tell if these succulents are real? Honestly, neither can we, even from close quarters! Some of the real cactii in our garden outside, pale in comparision with these, and the only way to make out is to pinch a leaf. :-) These are miniatures and add a lot of life to wherever we keep them. They have so far adorned the kitchen and the guest bathroom. The picture above is the foursome collection sitting on the kitchen window sill.

Above: Clicking away on a lazy day- The Reclaimers- a guide to salvaging hardware- everything from really rusty tubs to screws and kitchen hardware sits on a game set called "Stretch Run", an equestrian board game which we are yet to figure out how to play.

A lonely kenyan soapstone thinker flanked by two wine bottles and other trivia on our mantle. The Walt Disney Treasury of classics is over 30 years old, and from Joe's childhood- a gift that his Papa gave and treasured to this day.

This one is from our studio! I painted a plain old white Ikea bowl into this as a gift for Joe many years ago. There werent much rules, and the basic idea was to just play around with all four basic colors- Red, Blue, Green and Yellow- in some shade or form. This one is reminiscent of our days together after we got married and took some ceramic painting classes together. It was such fun! The paint is Pebio ceramic paint, which is believed to be one of the better quality ones- and non-toxic. After painting, the dish was baked in an oven to "set" the paint in, so that it cannot be washed away. Ceramic painting is a really fun hobby to have, and we are hoping to catch up on it again.