Handmade Tile

My customers are such creative and interesting people! Sorting through my email archives, I came across photos of two charming and unique projects that I had not shared here yet. The first one is by K.P. She framed one of my four inch "Tree of Life" tiles in a frame of reclaimed wood. Some of the wood is painted, some is left natural. I love the little paintings on the square pieces of wood, especially the little tree on the orange background to the upper left. So sweet! The next project was completed by J.B. She made a mosaic style...

I do! That is why I make my owl design in both the four inch size, and the smaller two inch size (which is featured at the  very top of this blog entry.) But up until now, all my owls have always faced left. Now, thanks to a request from "European Tile Art" in San Diego, CA, I am making owls that face to the right, as well. I printed out an image of my large owl tile and sculpted him a friend: I made a mold of this new owl and have already used it to press a few...

This is one of those rare customer installations that I actually got to see in person! Some friends here in town did a beautiful job mixing some of my handmade tiles with "wood-look" porcelain tiles in their newly remodeled bathroom. What a good idea! They get the appearance of wood with the durability of tile, which makes a ton of sense for a shower. I like how they chose to run the plank tiles horizontally, it makes me think of a sauna or spa. There are three groupings of three tiles each inserted around the shower at natural intervals. It...

A few months ago, I was contacted by an old friend. Linda Goik used to run "Local Girl Gallery" in Lakewood. "Local Girl" was a real asset to the community, as well as being one of the first galleries to carry my work. Like a lot of people, I loved that place and was sad when it closed in 2012. So naturally I was thrilled to find out that Linda recently became the shop manager for the nearby "BAYarts" gallery, and I jumped at the chance to have some of my tiles in their upcoming holiday show. Here is some...

The Holden Arboretum's annual holiday art show begins this month. I am delighted that my tiles will be featured along with the work of many talented artists.  All of the work in the show is inspired by nature. The sale benefits local artists and the Holden Arboretum. The event runs from Nov. 19th through Jan. 8th. Here are some of the tiles that will be included: If you have the chance, visit the show then take a hike. Darrell and I were lucky to be able to spend a perfect afternoon exploring the arboretum on the day we delivered the...

You may have noticed that EmuTile.com looks different all of a sudden. That is because our new website went live on Halloween! This is website #5 for our little business. (I chronicled the first 4 websites in a blog post just over 3 years ago when we launched the previous version.) Why so many websites? Because my husband is awesome, that is why. He is very security minded, so he strives to keep us up to date with current web standards. You can tell the new website has strong security because the web address for every page begins with "https://" instead of...

This may not look like much to you... ...but to me it looks like Christmas, my birthday, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. I am so happy that my studio is back together and I am making tiles again. Thanks to a lot of hard work, the studio is cleaner and better organized than ever before. The work-space pictured above doubles as my glazing and packing area. The next picture was taken from the exact same spot, but with the camera pointed in a different direction.   In the foreground is the slab roller, which I use to make field tiles. The tile pressing room...

Happy first day of September! We have re-opened our online store and you are welcome to place an order. In the interest of full disclosure, we aren't quite finished putting the studio back together. It is still a bit completely empty. Sealing and staining the floor took a longer than we had anticipated, (pretty much every aspect of this project took longer than we anticipated!) but we are ready to start bringing my work tables, tile molds and shelves back in. I am SO READY to start making tiles again, but the studio won't be ready for another day or two. Thank you so...