Pendant Ocs

Well, I decided to try for one weekend at the medeival faire that is less than half and hour from my house. It's a new faire, so there are not that many vendors. Of course, there may not be that many people attending, but I also won't have that much inventory!I settled on doing just one weekend, so I don't have to worry about not selling for 3 weekends in a row, and if I DO sell out, I'm not stuck for 2 weekends without anything to sell! So I'm going to try for the Celtic weekend, and I'm making some circular pendants for the occasion.

I'm trying something new by making a lot of the same sized ocs so I can quickly make the same rough shape several times over, and they'll be roughly the same size. Then I carved them all out at the same time, and then tuned them all. This went much quicker, and I was able to do 10 yesterday and the night before, though I threw one out due to a mistake I made.

But here's a pic of the ocs waiting to be cut - they are bigger than the ones I did cut:

And here are the smaller ones cut open:

Here are some leather stamps I got, which I like, but it's very hard to get them on the smaller ocs, so I'm having to improvise some...

Here are the some finished pendants:

I'm bringing some business cards I made up for the belly-rinas for my doula to try to hand out at the DONA convention, and we'll see how that goes. I'm really hoping for a good response from that.

I've also been tossing ideas around in my head regarding the designs on the ocs and the smoke firings. I think if I underglaze and then matt glaze the design, it will stand out just enough but not too much after being smoked. I hope it will look as good as I visualize....

I might also be making canle votives for a local hotel. I am hoping that by Christmas Jim can make me a home-made potter's wheel for little cost, and that would make that job easier. But it's another source of income if the owner likes what I come up with.

I'm really getting very excited that all this is happening. I hope I'm not putting my head too high into the clouds, but find I can't help myself. The closer I get to my dreams, however, the more terrifying it becomes. Failure is right there beside me, waiting, as well. The "what-ifs" crop up, too. But overwhelmingly the dreams and hopes rise up and take over and I find myself playing the ocarinas for the sheer joy of it...

I am also wondering if there are some books in the library that explain music composition theory...that is, I want to play some simple music on the ocs like the blues, or jazzy music, or celtic sounding tunes, or whatever, without having to have a song. And not necessarily making my own up, but just playing riffs that are familiar enough sounding that they sound good. That way I can demo the ocarina at fairs or festivals and play a variety of music without having specific songs to play.