Callie Beller Diesel
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Posts posted by Callie Beller Diesel
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Titanium. Need some visual texture!
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I don’t mind sharing at all!
My best selling mug I can’t post from the front, because they have assorted swear words on them. Yes, I know. People either love them or hate them, and there’s no in between. But we’re all still 12 on some level, and fart jokes and swear words have endured for a reason. I’ve had some really intense emotional stories from people who told me that they used a mug with their favourite cuss word on it to help cope with the last year, and that’s no small thing, so I’ll keep making them.
Other than that, berry bowls are usually popular, I came out with some candle lanterns last year that get snapped up at a pretty fast rate, and I need to make more of them. They started off as garlic jars that got moved into a more multipurpose item.
Larger pieces always seem to sell eventually, but not at the same rate. I don’t really have any stock from last year; it’s all turned over. Cookie jars, large serving pieces, they all go. But it can take a few months sometimes for a piece to find the right person.
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Before you shop online, check and see if your country has any ecological controls they want to have observed. Wooden products sometimes have issues going from one country to another. My husband has a fun story about the time he had to try and ship humidors to Hawaii for someone’s golf retreat.
edited to add: If that’s the case, you might take the design to a carpenter friend.
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I think there’s a place for both. I like the accessibility of video, and the fact that there are keyword searches that don’t involve a card catalog! Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and a visual demonstration is worth volumes. I can find information rapidly with the internet, which I really like. I can see demonstrations from people I’d never get to see in real life, which is amazing!
But. Video is frequently paced too slowly for me to absorb things easily, and I get really frustrated when people ramble or go too far off topic. That’s a function of my ADHD, and not a comment on the makers of videos. I can get around most of this by speeding up the playback on most platforms, but if there’s graphics in the background, I need to pause to make sure I get everything. Most video also doesn’t include thorough (or sometimes accurate) synopses, or don’t have time stamp markers indicating points of discussion. You have to watch the whole thing to get the one bit of info somewhere in the middle you wanted.
Books go more in-depth. I love the tactile feel of reading a book over reading from a tablet. I can read and absorb information at the exact speed my brain wants. I can skim to that one paragraph with the pertinent info without having to read the entire chapter. I have a few hard copy references that I refer to constantly, because the internet is also distracting, and I don’t need to take side trips into rabbit holes when I just want the Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion numbers for a cone.
- Magnolia Mud Research, Babs and Pres
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3 hours ago, GEP said:
This weeds out the people who were just being impulsive
There’s definitely an argument for that! If I’m doing follow up, they get one, brief, polite message asking if they’d like to continue the chat from the weekend. If they don’t respond, that’s the end of it. I get verbose here, but in person I am NOT a high pressure sales person.
My personal preference is usually to deal with a special order on the spot, but I also keep my parameters of what I consider to be a special order very narrow so I can do that easily. I spell out my terms and conditions (deposits, time frames, taxes and shipping) before starting the discussion. I lead with the things that are most likely to turn people off, because I don’t want to go back and forth or deal with tire kickers. If someone’s feeling money conscious, that’s usually when I’ll get the “I’ll think about it.”
What I consider a special order is something similar to what I already make, but in a different glaze, or with another minor design alteration. I don’t copy other people’s work, I don’t make things I don’t already make something similar to, and I won’t offer any glazes that aren’t currently in the booth. For instance, I already make bowls, so if someone wants me to add a spout so it’s a batter bowl, that’s doable. Making an egg separator they saw on Pinterest isn’t. It saves days worth of emails if someone can point to a physical thing and indicate size and colour preference. If necessary, I do a little thumbnail to make sure we’re describing the same thing. I can then easily quote a price that’s marked up from the base item.
If someone wants a thing that I make that I happen to be out of, I just take a name and contact info, and let them know when the next batch is ready. Again, only one notification, and it’s up to them to follow up.
I can do this easily, but I’ve got my pricing structures worked out, and I make it easy to incorporate variations on what again I made myself a script to work off of so I’m not getting flustered. Kswan mentioned they were overwhelmed, so adding an extra script to their day wasn’t in the books.
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Shows can definitely be overwhelming at the best of times, and now is not the best of times! If offering to take orders is a service you *want* to offer (extra emphasis on the want to), people like feeling looked after. It’s a good idea to couch it in terms of yes, I’d like to be able to help you, let’s make an appointment for later so you can have my undivided attention. Make sure you get their contact info and follow up with them, rather than leaving it up to them to contact you. If you leave it up to them, you’ll never see them again.
For Trello, think I pulled the Kanban template to start with, but I relabelled all of it, added stuff and changed the background. It would have been just as simple to start from scratch.
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35 minutes ago, kswan said:
I need to start bringing a sketchbook or binder to shows where I can jot things down and organize.
Yes. Yes you do, if you’re going to offer this as a service. Taking a bit of time now to organize a system will save you a TON of time and headache later.
When I made my paper version, I got super fancy with my formatting, because it was part of a larger planner that I use to track a bunch of other things as well. I set myself up to enjoy using it, because my ADHD is a toddler and needs shameless bribery sometimes. It’s got a snazzy reusable cover, it’s printed on nice paper, and I like the feeling of writing in it with my favourite kind of pen. I spent a really ridiculous amount of time designing it initially, but it’s something I still enjoy using, so it was time well spent.
That said, you don’t have to get elaborate if it gets in the way of you creating a system. Even just having a pretty composition book from the dollar store that is dedicated to your special orders is better than loosing scraps of paper. Or maybe you need to get yourself a fun clipboard to keep the scraps in one place instead! The best system is the one that you actually use.
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@kswan Actually, using Trello just for a production list is perhaps under utilizing the software. Using it to keep track of special orders is probably a better use of it.
The way I described it for a production list shows card files being used as list items only, so you can manipulate them on the screen. Card files are meant to hold more info than that though. When you open the cards, there’s a ton of room to put all kinds of images and information, and to attach useful files.
Previously, if I was taking special orders at a show, I made myself a paper planner that I keep a bunch of stuff like that in so it’s all in one place. I record: Name, contact info, price of the piece we’ve agreed to, % of deposit taken, due date, and there’s space for notes and details about the order. There is room for a small thumbnail sketch, and I use a cheap sketchbook to go into more detail about the form if needed. With Trello, you’d be eliminating everything but your sketchbook, and you could still photograph the drawings and attach them to the card. I don’t usually take my tablet into my studio with me, so having the paper drawings in front of the while I’m at the wheel is still a good thing.
The way I’ve got my special orders board set up is pretty similar to how I’ve got my production list set up. In addition to the Pending/Clay Prepped/Thrown/Drying/Bisqued/Glazing/Fired headings, I add “Photographed and Contacted,” and “Picked Up or Shipped.” Each special order is set up as a card with all the information that I collect above, and as I work on the piece, it gets moved through the different headings. Once it’s finished, it gets an image taken, and that’s sent to the customer to let them know their order is ready, and to make sure they’re happy with it. The pictures get attached to the card too. If the customer is happy, we make arrangements to get it to them (either pickup at a sale, or shipping)and for payment. If I need to ship an order, I add the tracking number to the card, just in case something goes wrong. The card can be deleted after a few weeks or the order has been received.
The only thing that keeps me from ditching the paper copy entirely at the moment is that I do get repeat customers, and I haven’t worked out a better way of recording their contact info in a way I won’t loose it.
Edited to add: I did download the phone version of Trello, just to see how big the font is, etc on the cards. It is quite legible, and I think it’d be pretty easy to use on the go if you’re a comfortable thumb typist.
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On 10/6/2021 at 9:23 AM, Piedmont Pottery said:
It would appear that they have someone on staff whose job it is to scour the web for trademark infringers.
Definitely. The friend I referred to is an in-person friend in my city, not an online one in the US.
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@Hulk Did you mean for this post to land on the business part of the forum, or was the info intended for someone else?
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It’s quite handy! Here’s a couple of images, because that’s probably better than a verbose description. The first image is of an open card, which are the list items you can see in the background. The second image is of the production board. You can play around with formatting more than I did if you like things really pretty. I only changed the background to an image from my picture files on my tablet.
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So maybe some of you already know about the app Trello if you’ve had to work on projects in a more corporate setting in the last couple of years. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it, because every time I heard it mentioned, it seemed like more software than I needed. But a booth neighbour friend and I were talking about workflow stuff this summer, and she showed me how she used it to track the various stages of work in progress.
The plan was to try it out and report back after show season was done, but it’s been so effective in the last couple of weeks that I thought I’d write about it now!
If you’re not familiar, Trello is sort of like an online Kanban board, or one of those setups where you have the stages of progress for a project written at the top of a white board, and you take a bunch of sticky notes with individual tasks that need to be done and move them along the line as they get completed. In Trello, multiple people can log into the board from wherever they’re working from, and you don’t have problems with sticky notes falling off the board and getting lost. It’s more visually oriented than a spreadsheet, because you can drag and drop items (cards) from one list to the next.
You do need to sign up for an account, but Trello is free for the version that would be needed by most potters or other small makers, and includes a LOT of handy features. Paid versions are designed with large organizations with more employees and outside contractors in mind.
You want to start off by creating a workspace once you’re signed up and have your account confirmed. Within the workspace, you can create up to 10 boards on the free version. You could organize these boards as production lists for individual shows, but I’ve got mine set up for quarterly production, and to track items that have been ordered by people. You could also make boards for things like planning your assorted marketing efforts, but I haven’t got that set up yet.
Inside my board for my quarterly production, I made lists that include Needed, Clay Prepped, Thrown, Decorated and Drying, Bisqued, Glazed, and Finished. I then created cards within those lists of the items I want to have made for the start of show season. Cards can hold a significant amount of information, including links, photos and notes, but for my production list I keep it very simple. Each card is just a quantity of an item that I would make in a day, or that I need in grand total. As each item card gets dragged and dropped through the production stages, I have a clear idea of what’s done, what’s in what stage of progress and what still needs to be started.
For instance, I know I want to have 12 berry bowls made for the season. So the card starts out saying 12 berry bowls while it’s under the “needed” section. I would typically prep the clay and make all those bowls at once, but if they don’t all fit in the bisque, I can make separate cards indicating that I have 8 that have been fired and glazed, and 4 still waiting in the dried state. Depending on the quantity of an item you need to make, you could either make notes within the card of how many of what glaze job you want, or you could make separate cards for the different styles. After they’re all moved onto the “Finished” list, you can admire how much you accomplished!
It’s also very handy for tracking special orders. If a customer has ordered a piece, I can keep their name, order particulars and contact info on one card, and track its progress as above. Once the piece is made, I can attach photos to the card, and move it to the “Notified” list after I’ve emailed the customer. In the event the piece is shipped, I can add the tracking number to the card. That way if I need to process a claim, I’m not sifting through all my Canada Post receipts.
I’m finding it a lot faster to update than a spreadsheet or a written list. I do recommend it!
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Either or both can cause it.
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Yes, it will remain bloated. Clay bloats when it gets hotter than the top recommended temperature, and some of the ingredients are starting to break down, which starts releasing assorted gasses. Because the clay isn’t as porous anymore, those gasses get trapped and form pockets inside the wall of the pot, which is bloating. Adding more heat only makes it worse, and the pots will get very brittle.
The reason a slow bisque helps with darker clays is because they have a lot of secondary clays in them, which tend to have a lot of impurities that need more time to burn off. If they’re not given enough time in the bisque, those materials will continue to burn off in the glaze. Because glazes begin to melt and fuse at lower temperatures than the clay body does, the glaze can seal in gasses that still need to escape. This is especially true if the glaze fire is set to move through bisque temperature range quickly.
If you want to have a look at what a bloated clay looks like in cross section, I had a kiln malfunction earlier this spring that lead to a load being VERY over fired. If you go into the link in my signature here to my instagram feed, at the top tap on the circle marked NOOO! I talked about how it worked in my Stories
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1260 C is cone 9, or a hot 8 depending on the firing speed. Do you know how fast the firing was programmed for, and if the person firing the kiln used cone packs to verify the end temperature?
I’m assuming you’re using Black Mountain from Aardvark, because that’s the cone 10 black clay that comes up when I google it. I just want to verify that, because your location states you’re in Hong Kong, and I want to make sure there’s not another one with a similar name that came from somewhere closer. If it is the Aardvark stuff, they do specify in its description on their website that it needs lots of oxygen in the bisque, and that is true of many black clays. They need a longer, well ventilated bisque because stuff needs more time to break down and escape so it’s not causing problems in the glaze.
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Show up. Especially when you’re scared, or vulnerable, or avoiding it.
- Roberta12, Babs, Pyewackette and 8 others
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It really is only an advisory for those selling online, or naming them on a website gallery. Tracking you down in person is…unlikely.
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A friend of mine is having a rough day today, and wanted me to pass on some information that might not be as widely known as it ought to be.
She sells a round, dome style butter dish as part of her regular offerings on Etsy. This morning she was given a trademark infringement notice and had the listing pulled because she had tagged it as a butter bell.
A little research turned up that the name “Butter Bell” is trademarked, and if I’m reading things right, has been since the late 90’s. It got renewed in the last couple of years. They even sued Paula Deen in 2010 for intellectual property infringement when both entities were selling on QVC. It’s a trademark name, not a patent, so it doesn’t appear to apply to a specific form, although Butter Bell sells what I would have called a French butter dish under that name. The upside down kind you’re supposed to put the water in. The ads in my browser for this search showed similar forms from assorted retailers and Etsy, but all called “butter keepers” or some other name.
So if anyone has similar listing names or tags on websites or online marketplaces, you might want to edit your names to save yourself this hassle. This company is obviously willing to use a lawyer. Any of us selling in person might want to educate our customers on the names if there’s the opportunity, because I’m sure lots of people are using butter bell as a search term online.
- Rae Reich, Pyewackette, neilestrick and 4 others
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Not as a side business, no. You’d have to be able to vet someone’s capabilities somehow. A bunch of that leads to me doing teaching, even if it’s only about kiln firing, and I don’t have the time or physical space for that. If someone I already know needs a firing, (emergency bisque or whatever) and I don’t have something scheduled myself for that timeframe, I have no problem helping out.
Honestly, electricity costs in my area are pretty reasonable, and there’s 2 privately run clay studios that do beginner classes, 2 city run facilities that teach beginner and intermediate courses, and a handful of paint your own places that you can fire the odd piece at. There *could* have been some room for me to do some kiln for hire stuff during the pandemic, but I did NOT have the emotional wherewithal to be able to put a system together for that at the time.
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7 hours ago, PeterH said:
matching body and glass to avoid crazing or shivering).
Glass workers tend to have a much better grasp on this idea, as any cracking for them is a major deal breaking flaw. Crazing in pottery is in some instances an encouraged aesthetic. There’s a lot of instances where things that are considered flaws in glass are desirable in glaze.
Glass materials suppliers will be able to direct you very easily in regards to combining blown glass frit with slumping glass, or even commercially available float glass. From the manufacturer’s specs that I was reading, of all the technical obstacles in this project I don’t think fusing a frit made from that particular brand of bar stock to float glass will be one of them. Getting it to the right grain/mesh size will probably be the most time consuming/labour involved bit, if that’s the method you want to try.
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11 hours ago, jsmoove said:
that would require research and extensive testing."
“We don’t know. Test it and find out.” Everyone’s *favourite* answer!
I mean, it seems like it’s plausible. Try it!
I didn’t mention to my glassblowing friend where I thought you were in Canada, I just asked if it was available in the country. So you might be looking at mail order anyways.
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I feel like any diagram or 2D representation of my career path should involve crayons, lol!
To say it was indirect for a good long time is an understatement.I did start off being pretty focused, and got a whole BFA in ceramics, but when I graduated, I had what I know now to be the crash that every gifted kid with case of undiagnosed ADHD seems to wind up with. So I worked a bunch of wildly unrelated retail or reception jobs for the next 14 years, and made pots on the side while Life Happened and Was Not-pretty (TM).
After having a couple of kids and coming to the conclusions that 1)I make a terrible employee but an awesome boss, 2) since I can predictably earn a couple hundred bucks every time I resupplied the one gallery I was in, maybe I just needed to consistently get my work in front of people to earn some adult money.
Once I had relaxed and begun to see opportunities and possibilities again, my work did some pretty rapid growth and development. I built a TON of new forms, I went from cone 10 reduction to cone 6 ox, and went from using a white porcelaneous stoneware to a red stoneware with white slip deco. I challenged myself to keep the qualities of the cone 10 work that I really enjoyed while incorporating some of the easy turnover and colourful elements that cone 6 offers.
I don’t think I know of an artist that has had direct, linear path. We all seem to incorporate bits of our lives and our loves and our experiences into the work we make.
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It would be very straightforward to make a decal by creating either a silkscreen from the photograph, or simply digitally printing one, and those you can fire on quite easily.
But they’ve got a different quality than an image exposed from film, or as the OP is suggesting, exposing it right into the glass or ceramic substrate.
My glassblower friend was out of town, but she got back to me today and said you can buy Gaffer from Colour Fusion in Toronto. They didn’t seem like they had any G-080 in stock, but they did have a back link to the tech sheet for it on the Gaffer website. That suggests to me that they may be willing to special order it.
Edited to add:
My glassblower friend was very intrigued about the idea, and said she’d make a few inquiries herself.
QotW: What sort of shortage would make you "give up the ghost" ?
in Int'l Ceramic Artists Network (ICAN) Operations and Benefits
Posted
I went for a few years without being able to work in clay, more because other things were more demanding at the time. It was NOT good for the inside of my head. Age will at some point dictate that I can’t produce on a level where I can make my living solely by selling work, but I don’t know if I’ll give working in clay up entirely.