{"id":148,"date":"2009-06-21T14:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/?p=148"},"modified":"2010-01-09T08:10:30","modified_gmt":"2010-01-09T15:10:30","slug":"its-kind-of-like-making-custom-birthday-cakes-only-on-pottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s kind of like making custom birthday cakes, only on pottery."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj609biMNXI\/AAAAAAAAAUg\/1cda5iQ13GQ\/s1600-h\/DSCN4015.JPG\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349912374818911602\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj609biMNXI\/AAAAAAAAAUg\/1cda5iQ13GQ\/s400\/DSCN4015.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nMy apologies to my faithful readers for my lapse in blog postings lately.  I kind of dropped the ball on my blog last month and I&#8217;m finally getting back in gear here.  This week I&#8217;m putting together a pair of email sales pitches to my retail customers and my wholesale accounts for a niche market I&#8217;ve been cultivating over the years: custom cartoons on pots.  It&#8217;s a service I&#8217;ve been doing for years, and we always get rave reviews for these items.  It&#8217;s always interesting to<a href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj61szjbCaI\/AAAAAAAAAUo\/7W7wNLlwccw\/s1600-h\/toby.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349913188720380322\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 266px;\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj61szjbCaI\/AAAAAAAAAUo\/7W7wNLlwccw\/s320\/toby.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> see what kind of designs people come up with.  Last week, I received a great little cartoon for an order for a commemorative bowl for a dog named Toby who passed away this year.  I&#8217;m looking forward to putting this cartoon on a salad bowl.  To me, this is the perfect custom order: simple, fun to draw and very sweet.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I&#8217;ve done dozens upon dozens of these kind of pots.  Commemorative wedding gifts are a popular item.  One of my all-time favorites had Wally jumping a Harley Davidson motorcycle over the wedding party, on the groom&#8217;s side were scary biker types and on the bride&#8217;s side normal middle-class people. It&#8217;s a timeless story: the good girl falls for the bad boy.  For some reason, I seem to have gotten a number of custom orders from Deadheads and Phish devotees.  These cartoons are as cryptic as Grateful Dead lyrics: &#8220;Harry meets Sarah dancing in The Phil Zone&#8221;.  Unfortunately, I haven&#8217;t taken many pictures of these items, but perusing my collection of pics this afternoon, I did find a good one that illustrates this point perfectly.  <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">If you happen to fall in love at a jam band concert and you want a commemorative item, I&#8217;m the guy you need to call, OK? !!!!!<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj65NYhjP_I\/AAAAAAAAAUw\/YHSWPNb6uMI\/s1600-h\/DSCN0724.JPG\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349917046935338994\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_f4aa9hFY87M\/Sj65NYhjP_I\/AAAAAAAAAUw\/YHSWPNb6uMI\/s400\/DSCN0724.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>So I kind of have a love\/hate relationship with these pots.  I&#8217;ve been known to grouse about how much work it can be to draw them.  Those &#8220;Holy Shit! That&#8217;s good coffee!&#8221; mugs are so easy to draw, I can do them with my eyes closed.  Conversely, the graphics on these custom orders are a real challenge.  And I don&#8217;t charge nearly enough as I should for this service.  Right now, it will set you back and extra five dollars for a custom order.  <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Pretty cheap, huh? <\/span>I suppose I should charge more.  But when these pots come out of the kiln or when I get that glowing email telling me how the plate with the goofy cartoon made the birthday girl cry tears of joy, it makes me realize I can&#8217;t stop making these pots for people.  To order a custom item, you can go to the<span style=\"color: #000099;\"> <\/span><a style=\"color: #000099;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.goestores.com\/storename\/thomassedwards\/ViewDept-261757.aspx\">&#8220;custom items&#8221; section of my webstore.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Father&#8217;s Day SHOUT OUT to Walter G. Edwards:<\/span> My dad turns eighty this year and he was the early inspiration for my odd style of drawing.  When my sister and I were kids, he would always leave us silly notes with lousy drawings on them.  I&#8217;m pretty sure these lousy drawings were stuck in my subconscious when I picked up a glaze pencil back in the 1980s and started this line of work.  Thanks, Dad, for teaching me how to draw like an eight year old!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My apologies to my faithful readers for my lapse in blog postings lately. I kind of dropped the ball on my blog last month and I&#8217;m finally getting back in gear here. This week I&#8217;m putting together a pair of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/?p=148\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[485,7,103],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-custom-orders","tag-custom-orders","tag-pottery","tag-tom-edwards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallypots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}