Dear everyone,

I did find another person who was able to fill my glazing slot for this month. In fact I could have filled it several times over. My heartfelt thanks to you, who continue to support my work. Even as it takes me so long to get anything done. I am humbly grateful to have a business perking along in this economy. (Even a business so very casual like the way I run mine!) Your patient faith keeps me going and creating! And I am finding ways to give back.

Snowboard season ends around April 15th and then I will be back in the studio until next winter!! Now that the millstone aka “Roundabout” sculpture is gone from around my neck and almost into production, I can look forward with joy to a big season of glazing china horses in the kiln. In the coming months I will be contacting everyone in my “Go To List” database for completing your desired pieces this summer. If you’re not in the List and you have an idea for a china to be glazed be sure to contact me. Email Karen

I just had a person back out of their custom-glazed china commission slot that I was to start this week. Does anyone want to take the slot? I only have until March 18th in the studio to finish it and I’d need payment in full on that date. But you’d get it fast…!

I can only offer this work on chinas that I have in-house because I have to start it on Monday to have a hope of finishing it in 2 weeks. Here’s what I have to choose from, all bone chinas:

• Glossy Horsing Around/Eberl “Sharif” Arabian
• Glossy “Streetwise” QH
• Matte or Gloss “Caprice” warmblood
• Matte or Gloss “Boreas” Percheron

I also have several re-issue H-R’s that can be custom overglazed to a limited range of new colors with minimal white markings:
• Rearing Fez: now flaxen chestnut so it could be glazed to darker colors with dappling including bay, dark sooty buckskin, or black-bay.
• 6″ Zara and matching Zilla: now flaxen chestnut so it could be glazed to darker colors with dappling including darker chestnut, bay, dark sooty buckskin, or black-bay.
• Roan Lady: now palomino, so it could be changed to just about any solid color with dappling, in the brown/bay/chestnut range including bay silver.

The glazing I was taking on this month was to help pay the Roundabout resin and china startup costs. So you’d also be helping me meet this goal. 🙂

To get a price quote on one of the above items and discuss color, send me an email: Email Karen

If you live in the UK and are seriously interested in owning a resin copy of the Roundabout British Show Cob gelding sculpture coming this spring, can you please send me an email using the link below? If there is enough interest I will be holding a separate sale for you and would like to build an email mailing list to send info when ready.

Send me an email: Email Karen

Here are a few new photos of Roundie as I work on the resin that I cast from the waste mold.

I’ve just started sanding off all the resin extrusions and artifacts from molding. The darker grey areas are where I’ve started filling and resculpting with epoxy putty. I don’t bother to sculpt the hooves and feet all the way in clay since big resin sprues come out from them in the mold—otherwise the legs wouldn’t fill with resin when pouring. The end of the nose had one too, so that has to be re-shaped. I didn’t totally sculpt the ears (since I usually don’t get those to cast; I was lucky this time), plus more detail and finishing needs added to the tail.

The entire underside of the horse has to be sanded and filled/patched; it’s full of air bubbles. But I am super pleased with the top and sides (the important parts!) they just cast great. All I have to do there is smoothing-out and sanding of surfaces. He’s got dings and divots all over him. Even with all that work, he should be all finished sometime next week.

This will ultimately be the master finished sculpture that I will send out for production. A good quality production mold will be made from it. First I’ll have several solid resin casts made which will be used for making china molds. Those include my personal copies because I don’t like hollow resins! When I decide how many resin copies of Roundie I want to sell, they will be cast from that good mold too.

It is very hard for me to decide how many resins I want to release and how to price it. The factors I have to weigh include… the economy is still poor (can I even sell resins in this market?); I haven’t had a sculpture in the market since 2007 (is my work even “desirable”?); it is a horse type not commonly known in the US; it is just a bit larger than “classic” scale (which might not be a popular size); I want it to be a fairly small run to help hold value for buyers. I don’t want to do a resin “pre-sale” where people would have to wait for their resin. Resins will be ready to ship when they go on sale. Because I will pay for the edition upfront I have to be careful of how many to order. Lots to think about!

I have been running a couple “teaser” banner ads on the MH$P and Model Horse Blab websites, and due to that I have gotten new blog subscribers and Facebook page joins this month. Welcome and thanks for your interest in Roundie! I sure do love him myself—and I can’t wait to hold the first china one in my hands—so I guess that means it is a success no matter what happens.

Want to send me a note? Email Karen

After about 10 months now, the fact that Paul and I are retired has still not quite sunk in. In January I stopped producing a monthly magazine, my very last graphic design client. But we haven’t quite grasped hold of the fact we can do anything we want. Or to think BIG! Well today maybe we’ve gotten started on that…

My family is getting together in Tucson at the end of April. And then about 2 weeks later I’m to attend the Bring out Your Chinas Convention (BOYCC) near San Diego. Today Paul said, why don’t we make it a biiiig spring road trip and drive to both places?? With all those incredible mountain and desert west’s national parks in between?? We could bring the Boyz and the bikes and camp our way from Arizona to California.

ROAD TRIP!!!!!

I sure hope we can make this work. It would be incredible! Spring is the perfect time to go to those places before it all gets too hot, and before the summer crowds. I would surely dust off my blogging skills and document that big American Adventure!

Before any spring fun begins, I have a lot of work to complete. (Oh, and 2 months of snowboarding left!) I’m back in Boulder this week getting “Roundabout” ready for mold-making. He’s gone as far as I can take him in the clay stage. I’m relieved to report that at least the sculpture does stand on its own. Always a bit hard to verify when you’re sculpting clay in the air on top of a pole. I unscrewed it from the armature today in order to put it on a shorter one for the mold and stood him up briefly to check:

Paul is heading out to New York this week to spend several days with his Dad, and before he left I asked him to make Roundie’s mold box.

Just one of the million reasons why marriage is so wonderful: men love any excuse to use power tools, especially nasty noisy things like the saw…

The photo above shows Roundie on his much shorter post with the dimensions of the mold box drawn on the base. I want to make the box as small as possible because that means less rubber to pour and to cut apart.

The simple wood box will be placed around the sculpture, sealed with caulk, and then I will pour in the liquid urethane rubber to a level about an inch above the ears. It will cure in one day, then I will take the box off with Roundie entombed in a rubber brick. The next step is to cut it apart (probably a 3 piece mold) and then it will be ready to have plastic resin poured in to make a copy of the sculpture. The sculpture is destroyed in this process. It is a fairly crude way to do it but I am familiar with the process now and it’s fast so that’s the way I do it. It’ll take me about a week to clean up, detail out, and finish one resin copy. That will be my sculpture master which will be sent out to have a production mold made. The sell-able resins are cast from that. Better to pay for that expertise! If all goes well I think Roundie could be off to the casting company by the first week of March.

I am also glazing two chinas this week and hoping to cast a china “Optime” from the plaster molds. I will hardly have time to enjoy the fact that the weather will be in the sunny 60s. It feels like spring is almost within reach and how invigorating and inspiring that is. Even if we surely do have at least 2 more months of Colorado winter, this kind of February thaw gets all the creative juices rising!