Etsy Yart Sale

It has been almost a year since the first unofficial “Yart Sale” on Etsy. Yart sale? What exactly is a “Yart Sale,” you may ask? Visit this blog post in the Etsy blog "The Storque" and read about it and how your Etsy shop can become involved:
http://www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/ya-gotta-yart-4049/

The “2nd Annual Yart Sale” will be held from Wednesday June 10th-Sunday June 14th, 2009. This year the “2nd Annual Yart Sale” will be sponsored by the Etsy Supply Street Team (Team ESST). Although not an official Etsy event, it is Etsy supported as evidenced by the Storque article.

A “Yart Sale” is an artistic spin on the traditional Yard Sale: Art + Yard Sale = “Yart Sale”. There are many art museums, artists, and groups that have Yart sales annually to raise cash.

All Etsy shops are invited to participate. Choose to participate in your Handmade Store, your Supply Store, or your Vintage Store. If you have more than one shop you can participate in all of them.

To join the sale, simply post the following Yart Sale Announcement in the Shop Announcement section of your Etsy Shop and please include a short description of how you will be participating in the sale:
“I am participating in the Yart Sale on Etsy sponsored by Team ESST”.

Team ESST invites you to come, post, chat and shop on the “Official Yart Sale” thread in the Promotions Section of the Etsy forums. A new thread will be posted daily at 7:00 AM EDT beginning on Wednesday June 10th by the Etsy Supply Street Team with the forum title:
“SECOND ANNUAL YART SALE sponsored by Team ESST – June 10th, 2009”

Participating in the daily forum thread is a way that shoppers can find your shop. Simply post what you are offering. You could also encourage visitors to search “Yart” in handmade, supplies, or vintage. Even if you are simply offering a discount, it would be to your advantage to place Yart somewhere in at least a few of your titles or tags in your shop to draw those searching for items to your shop.

If you choose to get involved in the Yart sale sponsored by Team ESST (beginning Wednesday, June 10th-Sunday, June 14th). We encourage you to blog,tweet or post on your social networking sites to get the word out. Feel free to add your post links here after you have posted.

We highly recommend blogging before the sale to get Etsy people involved and during the sale to share what you will be featuring in your shops. You may choose to also feature on your blogs shops that are participating. Check out the Team ESST blog post and feel free to share the information and link our blog to yours:
http://teamesst.blogspot.com/

The Yart Sale certainly provides lots of promotional opportunity this week! Come on Etsy - join in!!!

(this information has been combined from various ESST sources)

Bisque-Fired Beads and some Buttons Too

I took these out of the kiln this morning. They will all go in plastic baggies until they are glazed. This keeps them from getting dusty which will also help the glaze adhere easier, making for a nicer end result.

I have a hard time doing any one type of bead very long. I quickly get bored of the shape or the texture, even when I LIKE the shape or texture.

But that does help with coming up with new varieties. Click on the photo to see the textures better.

I'm Back

I've had the store shut down for a few weeks. At first I shut it down because of the Swine Flu scare. Nobody knew at first how severe it would be and I figured with all the cases showing up in Texas that it might be good to help limit exposure. Of course now we know the virus was mild in the USA and all that good stuff, but then we didn't know.

About the same time my husband was called out of town on business to sunny CA and I jumped at the chance to accompany him and explore the Pasadena area for a few weeks. Now I'm back but only for a few days because he has to leave again and I enjoyed exploring the area and of course the beaches are such a treat.

I've popped into as many bead stores in the area as I've found and found one thing missing: CERAMIC BEADS! There are plenty of charms and gemstones and silver, but the only ceramic beads I've found are also plentiful at Walmart. On one hand I was sad because I was hoping to find some interesting bead artists, on the other hand I was thrilled because it means that all of the ceramic bead artists in the Beads of Clay yahoo group and others are really supplying an important need here online.

It's all good! Anyway, sorry no photos today. I will be starting the kiln for the few days I'm home but don't think I'll get anything new online before it's time to leave again. I think I'm going to take a small chunk of clay with me and a couple of wooden Popsicle sticks and sculpt some bead animals and clay whistles in my spare time. I think if they are small enough that they will travel well as greenware. We'll see.

Etsy Supply Street Team hosting a First Weekend Shopping Extravaganza

Beginning on Thursday at 12:00 AM EST, the Etsy Supply Street Team is hosting another "First Weekend Shopping Extravaganza." This month’s event will run from Thursday, April 2nd - Sunday, April 5th, 2009.

ALL ETSY SHOPS - HANDMADE, SUPPLIES AND VINTAGE - are invited to participate by placing an announcement in your shop and joining in with promoting on the "Official" Promotional thread in the Etsy Forums.


This will be a “Shopping Event” similar to a Public Marketplace. There will not be a "Overall theme" since Etsy is a Global Marketplace hence, the seasons, cultures, holidays, etc can vary quite a bit. Although not required, we do strongly encourage shops to have a feature, theme or sale as this can pique interest and help you to draw people to your shop.

You do not have to participate for the whole weekend simply join in when you can on the Promo thread in the Etsy Forums. You can search for the official thread - “APRIL FIRST WEEKEND SHOPPING EXTRAVAGANZA APRIL 2ND-APRIL 5TH”.

It should be a lot of fun! Hope to see you there!

Misson ... (part three)

Here we go ... two coats, thick glaze! The crystals in this glaze helped the glaze to pool to the bottom making what I would call a nipple bead. These are all about 12 mm hole to hole and about 14 mm at their widest.

The places where glaze is the thickest is definitely the same glaze as the originals. The originals were about 17 mm. I'm thinking that this batch might have pooled because they are considerably smaller. So one one hand I would say Mission Accomplished, but on the other, I still think I have to try these larger.

Sidenote: I researched my photo archives and found a date on the originals. I usually photograph new beads the morning I take them out of the kiln so the originals were fired on September 5, 2008.

I found a website which contains files of daily average temperatures for approximately 150 U.S. cities: Temperature Data Archive

On, September 5, 2008, the average temperature was 79.7 degrees in Fort Worth, Texas. It was just a bit warmer then than it is now. I'm always amazed by what I can find on Google.

I also found out that USA today has every bit of data I need in order to record weather data for a firing and I am certainly going to take advantage of that for future firings.

Mission .... Part Two

This is bead batch #2. I fired these at cone 4 on three different clay bodies. On the left is an ironstone clay from Texas Pottery. The middle is a white Laguna stoneware clay called Soldate 60, and on the far right is another clay body from Texas Pottery called "Taos Red". The look I'm aiming for is on the far left.

When I uncapped this glaze it was a bit thick so I added water. However, I must have added too much water. Also, this clay body may have absorbed more glaze that it did last time simply because of the humidity levels this time of year. I'm not really certain, just rambling about the whys. So many things are possible. The color where it is thicker is very similar to the effect I hope to achieve.

Therefore, I left that glaze uncovered and later that day applied an extra coat. They're in the kiln right now. I'll know tomorrow!

Mission .... Impossible?

The mission? To duplicate the wonderful color in these beads. I was asked by a customer if it was possible to get some more of these in my etsy bead shop and since I've been a very good potter and keeping actual notes on glazes and firings, thought, "SURE."

Now before we go any further, I must say that my notes were somewhat lacking. When I consulted them, they ran somewhat like this, "Love this glaze! (type of glaze and how many layers are described) Try it again with texture and deep holes. ... must put them on different kiln shelves again sometime soon, nice variations!"

Um, not very good very notes. Something like, "These ones, beads A were put on kiln shelf 2, the east side, during the month of (fill in the blank) when the temperature varied from ??? to ??? degrees. The sky was clear and it was not humid that day" would have been SO much better! Oh, it would have been nice if I had also mentioned what cone I had fired to, though I assume it is the normal temp that I fire beads to... although I was doing a lot of variations last summer when these beads were originally fired. Lesson learned.

Yeah, additional notes like that would have helped a whole lot. I know now.

So I looked through my bisque beads to see what I could experiment with. I had no rounds in stoneware available, but I did have some with texture. And the clay body on these beads I was almost certain was Ironstone and not Red Taos. I'm still pretty certain about that.


These are from a firing from about a year ago. I know these were fired to cone 6 because they are glued to a piece of cardboard and labeled. I have a lot of beads that I have documented this way and it does help tremendously. But I haven't done it with every new firing of each glaze combination. The flower bead at the far right looks like it might be what I am looking for. It is the closest of the three. However, I'm thinking I can find a closer match at a different temperature.

Normally I fire at either cone 6 or cone 06, but recently I've been firing mostly at cone 4. Therefore, the question is: did I fire the originals at cone 06 or cone 4? And which part of the kiln did I place them into? And will the temperature/humidity make a difference or not?


Here is an example of cone 06 on all three types of clay bodies. I put these in different places in the kiln and they all fired much the same way. I still don't know precisely what they would look like in a smooth round, but I do have a good idea.

Tomorrow I will fire to cone 4 and see what happens.