Friday Find - Mugtails

Found these in the newsletter send to me yesterday by 100gr design from Antwerp. Aren't they adorable?

Logo Design & Design Barter

Sometimes I like to do something else besides playing with porcelain and silver. I do love the digital world too, I blog, twitter, ..... and I designed my own website. It needs serious updating, but still I got the query from my yoga teacher, Martine, if I could design one for her. Of course I would I'd love to. Although she has been teaching for many years, she needed to start from scratch on the web-presence and everything which goes with it. One of the first things needed was a logo. For this I called in the help of the very talented lady called Alex from RALEV, whom designed the logo for Two Trees.

We, Martine and I,  brain stormed about the logo and sketching some ideas. We made a brief of what the logo should look/feel like: needs to include the symbol is the aum /ohm sign and a circle. The sign may altered to extend out of the circle, this way it also reminds of a scale. As life not always stays within the circle and you need to find a balance in life too. Martine, my yoga teacher does not stick to one yoga school, but takes what's best from different yoga teachings, so the alteration of the sign stands for this too. As she is more practical in her yoga classes, the sign may be sleek and modern. The circle may be bright green, like the apples, or orange. The lines of the sign are to have rounded ends, not like the square calligraphed ones one usually sees for this sign. Colour of the sign, an off black.

This is the logo which Alex designed for Martine:

It's just like with my own logo, I just gave Alex the gist of what it should be and she just captures it ten times better than you even could have imagined. So if you would like help from talented Alex too, you can find her via this cool website, it's called DESBAR and is a place where entrepenuers, develeopers and designers meet to share their skills. DESBAR is short for design barter and I just love the idea, why not swop talent instead of sending each other a bill. Be sure to check it out!

Spoons

I kept something tucked up my sleeve for you. 

Something new I've been working on: Spoons!

Each with a different animal head.

Safely stored and shipped in a handmade fair trade felt lined paper box.

Happy Stats

Sunday is here, so is September, time to sit down and reflect on the previous weeks.

• Discovering a way to make yummy hot chocolate in our aeroccuni (a thingy from Nespresso to whisk and warm milk)
• Running the creative back office for Conlibrio, a job which is a nice addition to and in balance with my time spend creating with clay, silver and glass.
• Finishing the chair for the chair project, so good to see all chairs together.
• Receiving wonderful feed back (happy tears) to a custom story bowl, such a compliment!

• Learning how to screen print at the wonderful etsy lab at Pini Piru's place.
• Enjoying a lovely dinner on a rare warm evening outside, a nice surprise from hubby :-)
• Receiving more and more orders for custom story bowls
• Sientje (1 of our cats) being happy too, she what she just typed: H00000000000000000iooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!ç!G000

The Chair project - part 4

Today the group work of our ceramics group is finally on display. so this is the 4th and final part about the chair project. For part 3 and previous go here.

Each chair of each member are on display in the garden of Katrien Van Baarle. She is in our group too and organises a ceramics event in her garden every 2 years. She made the chessboard you see below, followed by the other chairs.

I do love the diversity of the techniques and finishes used. It is so nice to see them together.

Besides our group work there is work of several other ceramic artists on display. You see some of their work in the pictures below with some general impressions of the location. You can still go there today and all day tomorrow. More info here (in Dutch)

If you are near Antwerp this weekend, go have a look; it's well worth it!

Friday Find - Nuala O'Donovan

The wonders of porcelain, I love this material 

and was in awe when I saw these creations from Nuala O'Donovan.

All her work is built by hand over weeks or months bit by bit, not jiffed from a 3D printer. So they have the natural imperfections of hand made items, one of a kind, as everything in nature realy is; one of a kind. She uses no tools but her hands to create these objects. I'm in love........

Head over to her site to smother yourself in more of this awesomness

Sweet Saturday - Rhubarb and Custard tart

Finally I have another sweet Saturday recipe for you. As hubby and myself are trying to eat less and so loose some weight, we have been staying away from desserts. But it's our holiday, so we're skipping our rules. I made a rhubarb and custart tart. The recipe I found in one of my AVOCA cookbooks. As usual I slightly altered it, so here's my version.

I started with baking the base in shortcrust party blind. The baking pearls from Artmind are perfect for this job. But the rubarb you can do even the day before if you want, just simmer it, see below.

This is the recipe for the pastry:
225gr plain flour
150gr salted butter
25 gr sugar
1 egg yolk
vanilla essence

Sift the flour, rub in the butter. Once it looks like breadcrumbs add the sugar and the egg yolk and mix into a dough; add some cold water if need be. Leave the ball of dough to rest for 20 min in the fridge wrapped in cling film.

While the dough was in the fridge I made the rhubarb and the custard for the filling.

750g rubarb - just simmer this till it's soft

Custard:
100ml cream
125ml milk
vanilla essence
3 egg yolks
55gr sugar
tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon butter

Bring the cream and milk to the boil, take from the heat. Mix the eggs with the sugar until it's pale. Add the tablespoon of flour. Than add the egg mix to the milk/cream, stir well and bring back to the boil, simmer for a couple of minutes and add  1/2 teaspoon of butter. Take from the heat and mix the rhubarb and the custard.

Take the dough from the fridge and roll the ball into a sheet to fill a base with a diameter of approx 23cm, bake blind at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

Fill the baked base with the custard rhubarb mix and bake all for 45 minutes at 140 degrees Celsius.

What to do with all those left over egg whites? Make some pavlova :-)  Bon apetit!