House Name Plaques update and finished project

Its a good feeling when a project like this is completed and the customer likes what they have got. I always feel under more pressure when making to specific requirements as things may go wrong in the kiln or the customer may not like what I have made and I generally feel daunted by commissions but feel compelled to take them on. After all if the customer has faith in what I produce then why shouldnt I?
Here are some of the processes that the two name plaques have been through, and the finished item.

At this stage the lettering has been drawn onto the clay and the plaque is left to go to leather hard stage ready to work  on again.

As above but this plaque I scratched a drawing of the hens and the pigs and left to go to leather hard stage.

At this stage the clay is leather hard which means it is still soft enough to work on but not wet  as the initial stage and not dry enough to not do anything with.
 I have dug out all the lettering with a clay tool and smoothed with a soft brush ready to paint glaze into the letters. After this I have to weight down all the corners to allow the work to dry really flat. This takes weeks sometimes. I am going to single fire these pieces (which means fire once with the glaze painted straight onto dry unfired clay)

Here I am putting the shelves in my kiln together to load up my work and do a firing.

These are the final fired plaques before I delivered them to Pairpoint's Farm.

The lady who bought them really liked them. So phew!!
Until another commission comes along.

Chickens and eggs and more chickens.................

Back in March 2011 I approached a local battery hen farmer and managed to talk him into letting me buy a few of his barn hens. I've been keeping hens now for about eight years and have been converted from the lovely large pure breed chickens to well,..... the scrawny, balding and anaemic varieties also known as the ex-battery hens. I bought three about four years ago and only have one left now and she has been a lovely little red hen and has laid lots of eggs for us over that time, but now she is pretty much in retirement and only lays a few eggs a year.
So here are the new hens straight from the barn and re-homed with me in March 2011......



And here is the OAP.






And again.

Our old Seven year old Light Sussex also an OAP now nesting in the hen house.

This is how they look now.
Two of the battery hens from March 2011 looking alot brighter and stronger and laying lovely eggs every day!