We just signed a contract to buy a house up in the mountains west of Vail, Colorado, which means we are going to sell our house in Boulder after 20 years here, and move to Vail! All very exciting, but first we have to do the move. I’ve been slowly packing up the studio and finishing up a few glazing projects before I lose access to the kiln for a few weeks in early October. And taking a good hard look at my collection. I’ve decided to do a bit of collection-thinning to have a few less things to pack and move. Here’s the first one.

This is custom glazed bone china “Caprice”, numbered 2, from my own collection. It was glazed in 2006, one of the first ones I finished. It should have remained with me… until I took this piece to a show and it tipped over onto the left ear when I was trying to adjust a saddle. The ear broke off in an odd way; the broken piece extended down towards the eye. I have repaired and retouched it, but since I’m a fussy purist collector I will suffer no broken pieces among my “keepers”. Other than the repaired/retouched left ear the piece is mint and gorgeous. I am asking $450.00 US postage paid. Send me an email if interested, thanks!

I will have several other nice pieces coming up this week at good prices, including a new bone china “Caprice” in black tobiano pinto, and a dappled grey bone china “Streetwise” that has a repaired leg.

Email Karen

Well, how about the one piece of “bad” news first. Roundabout cob resin sales are pretty slow, and I was hoping for those resins to both pay for their own production costs and help raise funds for chinas production. Since that is not happening, I decided to cancel the English bone china version of the Roundie, at least for this year. I may yet have them made in bone china down the road, because I personally love the medium and would like to own a few myself.

It is just too expensive right now to have the bone chinas made—my per-piece costs are pretty high before I can even put glaze on them. Plus I can tell at this point in my lazy life I am not getting into the studio as often to glaze things; I don’t want to be under pressure to “crank” the glazing out on bone chinas just to get my money back. That is not a recipe for quality work at all.

On to the good news. I WILL be getting earthenware Roundabouts into production soon. I’m so excited to tell you that Joanie Berkwitz of Pour Horse AND I will be glazing Roundies for sale. She’s making molds for me and I’ll cast my own and so will she. The molds are being made this month! I will be doing some claybody-customizing too, where Roundie will get things like leg feathers and long manes and tails. That’s a great thing to look forward to this fall, when the season changes. I’m always eager to do something new in the fall.

Speaking of the Roundie resin front, yes sales have been slow but I also haven’t done the full-court-press marketing campaign for him. The most recent batch of 10 was reserved for the UK special shipment and I’m glad to say that I sent 8 of them Over the Pond today. I also sold the other 2 to customers in the USA who asked for them directly. I have put in another request to BearCast LLC for 10 more resins. When those arrive I will set them up in my Etsy shop for a nice easy way to buy, and promote them to the wide world a bit more!

I am going to paint a Roundabout resin! Yes, believe it or not I am going to deign to contaminate my airbrush with acrylic paint instead of ceramic glazes (gasp!)! OR I might try painting one with oils. One way or another the first one I finish will be sold as a 100% benefit for a hobby friend in need. If I paint a second one, it will be an UNrealistic color like metallic blue pinto. Just because I want to.

I am sure there was something else I wanted to mention, but I can’t think of it so I guess it will have to wait for the next posting. Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Email Karen

I have some news on the Roundabout resin and china production!

The English bone china mold-making has been moved up to early August, so that means I will get the first bone china bisques later in August!! Very excited about that! I can’t wait to glaze it to all kinds of great colors. I will not be taking any custom-color orders on these initial pieces; I’ll be choosing the colors and offering them for sale. The bone chinas are limited to the production of one mold only; that will be 20-25 pieces. There will also be earthenware chinas coming from both me and Joanie Berkwitz probably sometime next year. Those will be able to be customized: look for the Hairy Roundie Earthies!

And I have learned that 10 more Roundabout resins are due to be shipped next week. I think most of these will be reserved for my UK “special delivery” program. But if any are left I will post them for sale here. Email me if you want a Roundabout resin and I will start a little wait list on this batch.

If you live in the UK and didn’t hear about this: I am offering a special one-time-only sale of Roundabout resins where they will be postage AND customs PAID. This is in honor of his British “heritage”. 🙂 I am going to send all the orders in one box to a friend in England, who will them post them out to the owners through Royal Mail. That way I can pay for the customs duty on the one big box. I am about to send an email to everyone on my list who already contacted me about the UK Sale. (It’s now time to pay! 🙂 )

If you want to reserve one of the UK-bound resins, you must contact me by Monday 1st August. The cost is $150.00 each and payment will be due (via PayPal only) by Friday 5th August.

Email Karen

This is a new bone china Boreas Percheron that I just completed yesterday. He is NOT one of the closed edition of 10 original finish (OF) pieces in MATTE solid black; this one is a custom finish. He is glossy and has a white star. He is kind of a “mistake” because I was trying to glaze a solid black Boreas with white markings—in matte—but I didn’t get my matting agent additive mix right in the new overglazes and he glossed up when fired. (That’s the short explanation.) Because I painted the overglaze color right onto a bisque, he is less glossy than a normal gloss glazed piece, but glossier than a satin finish.

I took him to a small show this morning and he now has NAN cards in cmg china breed and workmanship. (Though he was the only entrant in the “black” class… and this color is no workmanship challenge… and in fact I failed “workmanship” because it didn’t fire the way I wanted… so the poor boy hardly earned it!)

I was glazing this one for my own collection and didn’t get what I wanted, therefore I am offering him for sale. This is the LAST Boreas in bone china that I will ever offer for sale, because I only have one more and that will be MINE! (And I will practice my matte-finish glazing on a reject piece next time.) 🙂

He is $450 postage paid. Send me an email via the link below if you are interested.

Email Karen

I just made up a one-page British Show Cob info sheet, to use when taking your Roundabout resin or china to model horse shows. It has 4 photos I took myself at the Royal Windsor Horse Show “cob day” (among ones I used as my sculpture references) plus a description of the show cob from the British Show Horse Assn.

I know there are only 13 Roundabout resins out in the world so far… but if you’d like one of these info sheets to print out, the Google Docs link is below.

NOTE, the file is LARGE (25mb!). The photos are all high resolution so that it will print out nicely.

LINK TO PDF.