This weekend, I will hold one last online sale for the pandemic. This time it won't be small pots only, or a limited quantity of pots. I will be offering pots of various sizes and shapes, and enough of them so I don't expect them to sell out. I will ship to anywhere in the US. 

This is my way of expressing gratitude to everyone who bought pots from me online during the last year or so, and for putting up with my narrow parameters for selling online. 

I ask for patience in terms of packing turnarounds. Depending on the volume of sales, it may take up to a week for me to pack all the orders. 

Shipping fees will be as follows:
Up to $50 = $12; $51 to $100 = $15; $101 to $200 = $18; $201 and above = $24

Just to reiterate, this will be the last time I ship pottery. Art festivals and craft shows are on track for the fall, and I will return to my "no shipping" policy. 

My shop will begin accepting orders at 12 noon ET on Saturday, July 17. Have fun shopping!
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https://goodelephantpottery.square.site

Greetings to all the pottery fans in Happy Valley! This year's Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts will once again be a virtual event. I am handling my participation in the "free home delivery" model. I will accept orders to the following counties: Blair, Centre, Clinton, Huntingdon, Juniata, Lycoming, Mifflin, Montour, Northumberland, Snyder, Union. (Honestly though, if you live in a county adjacent to one of these, send me an email with your zip code. If it's reasonable, I will stray into adjacent counties.) 

My online store is opening on Thursday, July 8, at 12 noon sharp. It will stay open until 8pm on Sunday July 11, or until pots are sold out, whichever comes first. I have a big inventory prepared for this event, so I don't expect things to sell out. Deliveries will be made July 13-15. 

Enter my online store by clicking here:
https://goodelephantpottery.square.site

Visit the CPFA Sidewalk Sale page for links to all of the other artists participating in this year's event: 
https://arts-festival.com/artists 

Happy Summer Solstice! This is my favorite time of the year, when the days are as long as possible. I realized I need to post some updates as I head into the summer season.

Firstly, a report on how the book bindery sale went back in February. I went into it hoping to sell about 30 books, and I ended up selling 89! It was very different from a pottery sale on many fronts. I did not need to stock up on inventory in advance, because books can be made on demand, one at a time. Unlike pottery where it takes a few weeks to finish a pot, and it takes a kilnful of pots to make the kiln worth firing. The books were made to order, without needing to anticipate in advance which items would be popular or not. Whereas the pottery business involves so much analysis to predict inventory needs before every sale. My stated goal was to ship every order within 2 days, but that proved to be impossible. As soon as the store opened I got flooded with orders, and it took me four days to finish the initial rush of orders. After the first day, the pace of new orders slowed down, to a point where I could definitely ship everything in two days. But now I know I need to plan for a big rush at first. 

The process of making books is also different from pottery. After spending those first four days making books for 8 hours per day, I did not have a single sore muscle or body ache. I did learn, however, that I cannot listen to audiobooks while making books. I needed my concentration to avoid mistakes with measuring, cutting, or sewing. Hopefully that will change as I gain more experience with it. 

My plans for this summer is to do one more book bindery sale in late July or early August. I was really happy with the designs I sold in February, and some of them will get small upgrades for the next sale. I'm hoping to develop a design for a weekly planner later this year, which will be available around the holidays. It will be based on the weekly planners I used when I was a graphic designer. I don't really need them anymore as a potter, but they will be well-suited for anyone with a desk job. 
​ 

And now for a solstice update on the pottery studio. After the book bindery sale, I went back to making pottery. I had a list of requests to follow up on after the Holiday Sale. I am blessed to have customers who were willing to wait 3 months for their pots. Then I held another "Small Pots Only" online sale in April, and one more "Free Home Delivery" sale for local customers in May. I admit that I am shocked that this format still worked after a whole year! Pottery customers are an exceptional class of people.

Going forward, I will do another "Free Home Delivery" sale for the State College, PA region, in conjunction with the Virtual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, from July 8-11. (I will write a separate blog post with more details.) I'm preparing a large inventory for this show. When I get home from making these deliveries, I will put any remaining pots for sale online, for customers anywhere in the US. That's right, I will mark the end of the pandemic by doing one last big online sale, and not just with small pots. (I'll make a separate blog post about this as well, with all the details, when it gets closer.) As much as I hate to ship pottery, I do need to show gratitude for those who bought my pots online when art festivals were not available. Just to be clear, this will be the last time I ship pottery. Of course, I reserve the right the eat my words if the pandemic takes a different turn. But right now, it looks like art festivals and craft shows will be back in the fall, and I will return to my "no shipping" policy. 

As for the fall, I have been accepted into two nice shows, though still waiting for confirmation that these events will be allowed to take place. Things look optimistic. I have applied for two more shows. So I am hoping to have four shows total on the schedule. And I am planning a Holiday Open Studio, just like the ones from before the pandemic. Details will be posted on this website as soon as they are confirmed!

​Again, I hope you enjoy the warmth and the long hours of daylight! It's been a very strange year, and we should be proud of ourselves for making it through. Let's keep our fingers crossed that things continue to go smoothly. Oh by the way, keep your fingers crossed for me, because tomorrow I am belatedly celebrating my 50th birthday by doing something exciting and scary. I'll report back when it's over. 

For a limited time, Good Elephant Pottery is becoming ...

Good Elephant Books!

Offering hand-bound, archival quality books, in a small number of designs. All books will be made to order. My goal is to ship every order within 48 hours, volume permitting. If your order will take more than 48 hours to ship, I will keep you posted via email. Allow 2 to 7 days for transit time after shipment. Orders will travel by USPS for a $5 flat rate shipping fee. I am shipping to US addresses only.

Because the books are made to order, items will not go out of stock, unless I run out of cover cloth materials. The larger books (journals and ledgers) may run out of some cover color options. I don't expect the smaller books to run out of materials.

This is totally different from a pottery sale. With pottery, I need to build up a big inventory before the sale, trying to calculate in advance what folks will want to buy, and items sell out quickly. This is refreshingly simpler! What makes it simpler is that a book takes less than 24 hours to produce, and it's possible to make just one. Whereas a piece of pottery takes weeks, and I can't finish it unless I have a kilnful of other pots to fire. 

This store will accept book orders for a few weeks, until I go back to work in the pottery studio. Or, until all materials are depleted, which I don't anticipate happening.

More book sales will happen in the future, this is just the first.

Start shopping at goodelephantpottery.square.site

Excuse me for indulging in a little pride. Finished pottery in my studio is usually stored on shelves, organized by item, and stacked tightly to be as space efficient as possible. These are the pots that have already been reserved for my upcoming sale, on tables, and organized by how customers are choosing to put them together. It doesn't look like an inventory monolith today. I can see the pots, as individuals and small groups. As I walked up to these tables this morning, it struck me that my work looks really good! Even when there is this much in one place, it doesn't make my head hurt from over-design or noisiness. I am recalling all of the thought and trial that went into each of these designs. These designs are about concept and function, not noise. And I love how the pieces work together. I am being true to my values. Again, sorry for the pride. This arrangement of the pottery is also making me say to myself "dang, girl, you've been productive!" For those who are waiting to shop the sale when it goes live, don't worry! This is only about one-third of the pots I made for the sale. Lots of nice pots will be in the shop!

The pandemic is partially responsible for these new platter designs. When shutdowns first began, I was watching a lot of Netflix and got hooked on a charming Japanese show called Midnight Diner. The title artwork for this show included pretty patterns that I knew were somehow related to fabric art, but I didn't know much else about them. I tried carving these patterns on some vases earlier this year, and when I posted them to facebook, some of my facebook followers (who are fabric artists) gave me the right term: Sashiko. It is a traditional form of Japanese embroidery that was initially developed to strengthen fabric and make it last longer. Carving these patterns is extremely time consuming! So I tried to develop a method that would be more productive and consistent. I ended up making stencils, cut from roofing felt. The cutting of the stencils was even more time consuming, but now that they're done, hopefully I can use these stencils for a long time.

​I embed the stencil into a slab of clay, then brush over them with porcelain slip.

I also needed to make a new styrofoam mold for this 12 inch round platter. (If you are interested in learning this technique, Handbuilding with StyroFoam/Plaster Molds is available in my online pottery school.)

And here's how the finished platters have turned out. (Note: the one on the right is already sold). I am selling them now for an introductory price of $85 each. I'm hoping to sell them for $95 or $100 in the new year. 

This next new design is something I've been hoping to develop for several years: a storage jar with a lid that holds a silicone gasket, making the jar airtight. Maybe not 100% airtight, given that the gasket is not being held down with pressure, but it's a lot more airtight than a typical ceramic jar. My intention is for these to be used for loose tea leaves, coffee beans, or spices. I like this design so much that I am keeping one for myself (if you know me, you know that mine is full of coffee beans now). These are being offered now for an introductory price of $48 each. 

 
This last item is not really a new item, just a new variation on an existing form. The 4.5 x 10 inch rectangular trays now come in a "lily of the valley" design, in addition to the existing "cherry blossom" and "ginkgo leaves" designs. They are $38 each. Expect to see lily of the valley carvings on other forms in the coming year. 

The holiday sale opens tomorrow, Wednesday December 9, at 12 noon. All of the photos will become visible at 9am, so shoppers have 3 hours to browse and make decisions before the selling begins. The store's URL is https://goodelephantpottery.square.site. Have fun shopping!

Thank you for visiting my website during the 2020 Virtual PMA Craft Show! Please read this quick blog post, or watch the video below, before entering my web store. I will only be taking orders from the Philadelphia area, and your pottery will be hand delivered to your home, with no charge for the delivery. Shipping to other areas is not available during this event. 

The following counties are included in my delivery zone:
In Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester
In New Jersey: Mercer, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester

My store will be open for the Preview Night on November 5, from 4pm to 8pm. Click here to buy tickets for Preview Night. The store will open again on November 6 at 9am, and stay open until 9pm on November 8, or until the store sells out, whichever comes first. Shopping on Nov 6-8 is free, but a suggested gift of $10 to the museum is requested. Deliveries will begin on November 10.

​Click here to enter my store!

I mentioned this on my blog once before, that whenever I am engaged in DIY home improvement projects, I refer to myself in the third person as "Harriet Homeowner." This summer, I have been working on my house more than I have been making pots. Partly because I am not traveling for shows, and have not needed as many pots. And partly because this is how I deal with chaos, by trying to put my environment into perfect order. 

Whenever I complete a project successfully, especially if it's something I wasn't sure I could do by myself, I like to raise both arms in the air and declare "I AM HARRIET." 

I'll start with the biggest and most impactful project, though technically does not count as a Harriet project, though she still managed and oversaw the whole thing. I now have what I am unabashedly calling "real f*cking air conditioning." I got a mini-split heat pump system for my whole house. I had been living with window units for 20+ years. The difference in incredible. We've had some prolonged heat waves this summer, and I sailed through them. I plan to keep using my boiler and hot water radiators for heat, but now I have a backup heat system in case the boiler ever needs work.

This was a project I had saved up for last year, and was just waiting for the spring to do it. Then came the pandemic, and I decided to put it on hold, thinking I might need my savings account for other things. As I've been writing about on the blog this summer, I have found other ways to keep my pottery income flowing. So I went ahead with the mini-split.

I had to move everything out of the way for the mini-split contractors to work. Before I put everything back into place, Harriet decided to tackle a project that she had put off for way too long. There was one last room in my house, the smallest bedroom, that had never been painted. 

Although it is the smallest bedroom, it gets the best natural light in the house, at all hours of the day. So it is where I take photographs of my pottery. It also gets used to store miscellany. Before I put everything back, I purged out a bunch of the stored stuff. 

The paint for the above room was free, because I had a whole can leftover from when I painted my office a few years ago, which is right next to the above room. When I was done, I had a quarter can left, and I started thinking about the guest room, which is on the other side of this room. I had painted the guest room yellow about ten years ago, and I was tired of the color. So I went out a bought another gallon of this paint, and painted the guest room too. 

The walls in the guest room went from yellow to gray, which means I did not need to replace the yellow and gray curtains. Harriet was pleased with that. Now all three rooms in this area of the house (office, photo room, guest room) are all the same color. 

My house was full of bad light fixtures. Old, worn-out looking, and builder grade. I spent a lot of time shopping for new ones. I tend to prefer modern designs, but my house is 85 years old. I tried to walk the line between "clean and simple" and "1930s appropriate."

All of the light switch and outlet cover plates on the first floor of my house had been painted over many times. I swear I wasn't the first one to do it! But I admit I did it too during previous painting projects. Harriet said "enough!" The switches and outlets themselves were so dingy, and many of the outlets were so loose, plugs would fall out of them.

They have all been replaced, with new components that match the ones on the second floor of my house, which was completely renovated last fall. I even installed a nifty dimmer switch for the dining room (which can now accommodate either a sewing project or a fancy dinner) and a combination GFCI outlet/light switch for the bathroom. All of the old outlets were two-prong outlets. I learned that these can be replaced with grounded three-prong outlets as long as you have metal outlet boxes and armored (or BX) wiring. This is common in old houses like mine. A grounding wire can be attached to the metal outlet box. For those who are surprised that I did all this electrical work myself, anyone who can maintain an electric kiln can easily learn how to replace light fixtures, switches, and outlets. 

While I was touching up the paint around the new light fixtures and switches in the downstairs bathroom, I discovered that the paint in the can no longer matched the paint on the wall. I stirred and stirred and stirred, but it was off by a shade and a half. It looked terrible. So I repainted the whole bathroom.

Now that it's done, I don't mind that this happened, because I'm really into this new color. While I was in here painting, I decided to replace the sink faucet as well. The old one had a "chrome" finish that was corroding away. My memories are fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure it was a cheap model. This new one wasn't terribly expensive either, I chose it because it was the closest match design-wise to the tub's faucet. I hope it holds up better than the last one. I had always regarded the medicine cabinet and exhaust fan as "things that must be replaced eventually, because they are so old." I've had a change of heart. During this project, I scrubbed and shined up the outside of the medicine cabinet, and gave the inside a fresh coat of paint. The exhaust fan's cover plate had been painted over many times. I took it down and scrubbed off all the layers of paint, back to bare metal. Now it's feels nice to keep things that are original to the house, "because they are so old." 

Harriet is done. For now. I can't think of a single thing that needs to be worked on right now. 

Some of you might be thinking, "it looks like she's getting her house ready to sell it." My answer is that the plan is not imminent, but you're not wrong. I would like to enjoy the air conditioning for at least a while.