I'm only two weeks away from my first art festival of the year (Downtown Silver Spring Fine Art Festival, May 5-6), so I've been busy preparing some fun new gear for my booth.

I got some awesome new weights for my canopy! I need to thank Mark Cortright, from Liscom Hill Pottery in California, for suggesting this idea on the Ceramic Arts Daily Forum ... to make canopy weights out of steel bar stock. I googled the term "machine shop" and my town, and after a few phone calls I found a machine shop to make them for me. Steel bar stock is sold by the inch, and the machinist can tell you how much it weighs per inch, therefore you can design the weights to exactly meet your needs. I made mine 37 pounds each, for me that is heavy enough to hold the canopy down in just about every weather situation, and light enough to transport them by myself. They are 2.5 inch round bars, 28 inches long. Note the can of Rustoleum, these need to be painted to thwart rust. btw, I used 2.5 inch round bars because the machine shop had lots of it in stock, therefore I saved about $100 compared to having them order new bars for me. Overall, these weights cost me $220. They are so much more space-efficient than the dumbbells I was using before. And I have to say, they just look cool!

I also made some reusable price tags. This is not my original idea, I saw another potter using these, and I don't remember who it was. I rolled out long coils of clay, then cut them into 1.5 inch nuggets, with one end cut at an angle. I glazed them with my glossy liner glaze, and now I can write on them with a dry-erase pen. Unlike the paper tent cards I used before, I don't need to tape these down when outdoors. And now I can easily change prices in the middle of a show. 

And that's not all, I'm also working on new booth curtains, made from a fabric that won't wrinkle even if I'm trying. Plus a booth sign with a QR code (I'm so modern). And I'm setting up a MailChimp account for my email announcements, so watch for some way more attractive emails from me! (click here to sign up for the emails)

Last month, I arrived at my Friday night pottery class complaining of hand pain. I had spent that afternoon trimming pots that were a little too dry, and all the joints in my right hand ached from gripping my trimming tool so hard. I said that I wished OXO Good Grips would make trimming tools. The best idea I could muster for making my tool handles wider and softer was "ace bandages." But Alan Dowdy had a better idea.

"Pipe insulation."

"What's that?" I asked.

A few days later, I spent a whopping $3 in my neighborhood hardware store on a package of pipe insulation, which is basically a tube-shaped piece of foam. It's perfect. Some of my trimming tool handles fit snugly inside the tube without any fasteners. For tools that have skinnier or wider handles, I made lengthwise cuts in the foam to make the diameter smaller, or allow it to open wider, then fastened them on with rubber bands. I've been using these for over a month now, with no pain! I get excited when I think of all the wear-and-tear I just spared my hands from, over the next 20 years or so. That $3 bought me so much more foam than I needed, so I brought the rest into my Friday night class, and we all made our trimming tools more comfortable!

(Click here for Sometimes Pottery Hurts, Part 1)

Pottery maven Chris Campbell of Raleigh, NC just launched a Facebook page dedicated to local potters (wherever you are). She is posting "action shots" of pottery in use, along with the potter's name and hometown. She just added a photo of one of my pots, you can check it out here! This page was launched just earlier this month, you might want to "like" the page to see what comes next.