Firing discovery

Some time ago my neighbour gave me one of those charcoal kettle BBQ's. I had the idea at the time of using it for paper making but then I got a gas burner BBQ and the kettle sat in the garage lean to collecting dust and spider webs. A few months ago i asked Ricky's Mum if she could make use of it and she said. Yes as they didn't have one. Fast forward to two weeks ago at pottery - I’d gone over to the studio after work on the Thursday evening but was not feeling the best. I'd even considered going straight home, but I'm glad I didn't. While having a coffee and a chat with Wendy and Rod, who are key members of the group, we somehow got on to the subject of pit firing and ways to it in your backyard. That's when I learned about using a kettle BBQ. Wendy suggested I have a look on YouTube so I watched a videos  and got very enthused in giving it a go myself. Needless to say, the next day I phoned Ricky's Mum and asked if I could be an Indian-giver and have the BBQ back. When I explained why, she more than happy to return it as Ricky enjoy doing pottery and it'll be something different for him to learn about.

I even had the bags of charcoal returned to me.

My idea was to create a pottery boot that could be used as a kitchen herb planter. I found a boot pattern online and enlarged it 400% to to actual size of a boot.

 I talked to Wendy at the pottery group, who has years of experience working with clay. She was very excited for me when I said I'd acquired a kettle BBQ from my neighbour and didn't realise what I could do in it when I gave away but had it returned. She recommended I used red raku clay as it is a hardy, coarse clay ideally suited for the hand building of large work, slab building and sculpting. 

  It has "beautiful strength, plasticity, workability and is forgiving for all methods of hand building. plu really low shrinkage - a stunning handbuilding clay" 

 I found the easiest way to roll it out was "slapping it down" and "flipping it over" to stretch it.

  Then I cut out the shapes using the paper templates as my guide. When I tried to assemble it, it wasn't what I really had in mind -it was more like a converse sneaker.

  So I went and got my boots and tried to take a pattern off of them which was tricky to do.

 It took at few attempts to get the shapes right...

...and not have it too thick or too thin.

In the end I abandoned to whole idea as it turns out making a boot is much easier in my head than in reality! I think I'd better just stick to soap dishes.

 PAPER-MAKING/SOAP LABELLING

I needed to make up a batch of paper so I could label more soap.

SOAP-MAKING:

I spent an afternoon making soap as I've almost run out of stock.

Soap Order - New Outlet!

The Patiki Studio and Gallery in Helensville, just north of Auckland emailed requesting some samples of my soap and upon receiving them, they placed an order for 80 bars! 

 One of the things I've really struggled with is with pricing, and working out what is the wholesale cost and what is a realistic retail cost. For many years that's been set at $6 per bar or 2 for $10. I really can't sustain that so after much deliberation (and people telling me to put the price up to $7 a soap) that's what I'm going to do. 

I bought a couple of plastic containers with divisions to make  bars I can cut in half and I plan on pricing these at $4 each. I had a bit of trouble getting the soap out of the container and found they need to be sliced immediately before hardening - otherwise the block got slightly damaged while being cut in half. 

8 hours

Soap making in July 2017

The view over Helena Bay - my trip out to the Art Gallery at the beginning of the month was very therapeutic and inspiring. After my sister and I had looked around the Gallery and shop, had lunch at the Cafe and took a drive down to Teal Bay - a hidden treasure along the Northland coastline.

The sea was wildly pounding and I took LOTS of photos of it. 

 We took a walk along the beach and collected large bunches of kelp along the way.

 When I got back home, some went on the compost for fertilizing the garden and the rest, I blended in my processor with olive oil for soap.

Seaweed soap on the right..

 I spent the day mid-month making more soap - orange n spice, lavender, chamomile, manuka, rose, kawakawa, feijoa, lemon geranium, kowhai and pohutukawa. These will cure for 2-3 weeks before labelling for sale.

Clean trays drying in the sunshine.

Soap making - 7 hours
Photography/editing - 1 hour

Soaps, salves and paper-making plus Markets, stalls and exhibitions

Harvesting/Processing Plant Materials for soap

 I forgot I had a box of home-grown harvested bay leaves drying in the boot of my car.

I put half them through the processor (the rest I'll keep whole)

I completed filled an ice cream container so that'll make up many batches of Gardner's Soap - Bay and (ground) Pumice. I've still got a boxful of manuka trimming to process but it's needs more drying to easily remove from the branches.

Paper-making

The beginning of June heralded in some beautiful fine weather - to good to be indoors!

The banana palms had grown like Topsy again so I cut them all back in preparation for a big "cook up" - I chopped up enough to fill my two stock pots and added the partially cooked pohutukawa leaves as well.

 

My new-to-me BBQ! I scored it for $15 from the SPCA Secondhand Store when I recently dropped off some unwanted items.

  It's bigger than my other two old BBQ's and comfortably allows both stock pots at the same time. 

When time permits I'll rinse the fibres out in the outdoor bath seen in the top photo.

 While the abaca and pohutukawa leaves where cooking I processed a preserving pan of precooked and rinsed harakeke fibres with my insinkerator.

I got real excited to see a kingfisher, was able to quickly retrieve my camera and just managed to take this photo before it flew away! 

The following day after pressing between two pieces of wood I hung them on the washing line in the sun to dry.

Then to finish them off so I could label more soap I found an ingenious way of completing the drying process...

 

...they fit perfectly between the fins of my oil heater!

 To flatten the batches of dried paper for I usually place them between the two pieces of wood again, weighting them with a concrete brick.Not very high tech but I'm learning to be resourceful and use what I've got. I've now got a really good stack of handmade paper again and was able to label soaps for The Bach, Putiputi Ra and for the upcoming TLC end-of-term Pop-Up shop and Exhibition. I'm also really interested in making book - so watch this space!

Balms (Salves)
So, I've been thinking about how I good divide up the kilo block of wax and it suddenly came to me to use a silicone cupcake mold that I'd picked up cheap.

If I remember correctly each block 

weighs approximately 50 grams. 

With some of my salves sold out and requests for 

more I spent a couple an afternoon making more.

I designed and printed the labels for the balms and used my xyron adhesive tool I bought second hand off trade Me for the labels These are destined for the "Matariki Market" and the TLC pop up shop.

Markets/Stalls

Labelling, pricing and packaging my soaps always takes way longer than I thought it would. I designed and printed out some information pamphlets for people who wanted to know a bit about my soap. I also designed a business card template to print out on my handmade paper. I found this much quicker to do with all I learned making info pamphlets so that was good!

The Matariki Whanau Market started at 10 am on Saturday
 17th June but stall holders were asked to be set up by 9 am.

These photos were taken before it started to get REALLY busy!
So busy I was almost having a panic attack - I've never seen
SO MANY people on the bridge at once!

It was a beautiful mild sunny winter's day
and this was my view from my stall.

I found the reflections in the water calming -
a tiny therapeutic window amidst the busy-ness!

Silly me didn't take a photo of my stall though.

Exhibitions

Periodically I learn of an exhibition on at the Geoff Wilson Gallery at NorthTec that interests me.  Abstraction - Latitude by Longitude caught my eye as it was an artist that used tapa cloth as a support for paint. This is how Filani Macassey's work is described...

"A specific connection with land is the theme of an exhibition of new work by Northland artist Filani Filina Macassey."

Filani has used materials sourced from the earth – paper mulberry fibre from Fiji, natural mud pigments from Northland and Fiji, charcoal, traditional dye and printing inks. The natural elements are sourced from regions with which she feels a connection to.

Fijian-born Filani is a graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland, she has been involved in many community art initiatives and has exhibited in New Zealand, Fiji and Europe. Her work is inspired by the duality of having been born in Fiji and living most of her life from the age of six and a half in New Zealand. “I suppose it is a way of creating an individualistic identity” she says. Filani recently completed an internship at the Geoff Wilson Gallery, North Tec, and is the Coordinator of the newly opened OWL Community Hub in Wellsford. After having travelled to South America and Cuba, Filani moved to Kaiwaka during October 2015 and is currently setting up an artist studio.

[Source: http://www.northtec.ac.nz/events/2017/abstraction-latitude-by-longitude]        (Photos are mine)

I had the opportunity to speak with Filani and it was really good to hear about her creative journey. She briefly shared a little about her colouring processes on tapa cloth which was what inspired me to attend the opening of her exhibition. I would like to experiment more with painting/printing and dyeing on my handmade paper. Something else to work towards.