DECO Clay Craft Academy - Blog

A quick post...

It was a very nice turned out for the Mission House Holiday Craft Fair. Thank you so much for Gary and Chenli who were there to take care of our booth for two days. They made many beautiful pieces for sell and there were a lot of customers stopping by, many who came last year. And also thank you to Lynn and Bob who participated in this fair to make our booth very pretty with their pieces.

 
Since finishing the craft fair, Chenli and I were very busy trying to finish the Macy’s order. We we needed to finish 50+ pieces of merchandise in time for the holiday season. We have sold quite a number of pieces to Macy's this year, I have to say it has been big challenge and responsibility to make pieces suitable for such a big retail store. Every time we complete an order and drop them off we feel so relieved. I can't tell you how happy I was to finish this last BIG order for the year! Cheli has been such a big help to complete these orders. We have been such a great team! A great BIG thanks to Cheli for all your hard work!

Tim and I have been designing the 2010 DECO Clay Craft Academy Japanese newsletter. The Japan office mails over 7000 copies to each one of the members at the beginning of every year. It has been lots of late nights working on editing and designing this issue. It is almost completed and ready to send to print! One more proof!!! It may take a little while, but we hope to translate to English and share this newsletter to the DECO members who live in the US.

Yukiko

Hello everyone! I hope you had wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Hello everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day! Ate too much?! My thanksgiving was really nice. We enjoyed cooking this year and had really nice time with it.

 
How about this thing called Black Friday? Have you done any shopping? Every year I am always behind with Christmas shopping, this is on my “to do” list for now. The year flies so fast and I find it so hard to keep up with all of life's details….

DECO is going to offer a special yearly sale starting this coming Monday! We would like to thank you so much for all your continued support this year. It has been a very busy year for me, I feel we have accomplish a lot and feel very thankful for everything this last year has brought.

We are also participating in the “Mission House Craft Fair” on Saturday 11/28 & Sunday 11/29. This is our third year to join this craft fair. Mission House is very unique setting on historical grounds; you will find many local crafts and good food at this event. We will have some special things for sale by the Hawaii DECO instructors. We hope to see you there!

The weather in Hawaii has been pretty “cool” lately, Diamond head has started to get greener and North swell has been up!! I need make a little more time to get out and feel this beautiful Hawaii weather.

C3 classes in the Bay Area, CA

My mother and I had such a nice time meeting all the instructors who attended our C3 classes in the Bay Area, CA. We have been planning to meet the instructors in the mainland for a while; the number of new instructors has been growing.  Teaching the new C3 curriculum began this year and we have been creating new techniques and projects for those who completed both C1 & C2 to become certified instructors.  It is our goal to support and teach all the instructors and this was great opportunity to get everyone together. There was such a nice group of ladies who attended these classes; many of them are from the Bay area, some from southern CA, one from Georgia and New Jersey. Even thought the classes were very intensive and squeezed together in a short amount of time, they all did wonderful work. We were so impressed with everyone’s dedication to manage everything we had planned. It was very nice to spend the week together working on what we all really enjoy.

 
Diane also invited us to teach at her house one evening. Diane is one of our certified instructors in San Jose and she is one of the first students who came for classes when I opened my studio. She has been very dedicated to our craft and her business has been growing due to all her hard work and talent, I am very happy for her success. She invited such a nice group of students to the workshop; it was great to meet everyone.

 
A special thank you to Denise and Charles for letting us to use their beautiful home; it was truly our treat to be able to use such a beautiful space and have there support. Thank you so much! Our trip of 9 days went so fast in the Bay area and San Francisco. The town of San Francisco is such a unique town with all the famous hills and beautiful views of the bay. I really love the historical buildings and houses…of course there are tons places to hang out here… cafes, good restaurant and shopping!!!  I wish I could have spent more time to look around all these cool places; I will definitely keep that on my list for next time.

 
Once we get back to Honolulu, we will be teaching the C3 series 4 classes to the instructors in Hawaii.  It has been very rewarding teaching this new curriculum this year.  Seeing everyone completing these projects has been a great experience of my own as well.  I look forward to next year and the beginning of the next series of the C3 classes.

Yes, it has been a very busy year of traveling; I don’t have anymore travel plans until January of next year! I will put my focus to the holiday projects and finishing up some custom orders. I look forward to enjoying Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season. I wish everyone a happy fall season!

California Classes

I just returned from Japan teaching the new C3 Series 4 classes consisting of Christmas and New Year’s projects. As always, it was a very fast paced trip and I still have jet lag! Fortunately, this is was the last Japan trip for the year!

Next we are off to Northern California with my mother to teach the instructors there the new C3 classes. We are very excited  about this great opportunity for us to meet the instructors and also for the instructors to get to know each other and create a great bond and support group for themselves!

While in San Francisco we also plan to visit some new stores to introduce our line of products. There are some nice shops that we would love to visit!

Below are pictures of our 2009 Christmas and New Year’s kits. When I return from California, classes will begin in Hawaii for these kits. Remember to check your email and our website for updates on when the kits will be available and also to sign up for these kit classes. Also please remember that every year we only have a limited stock of these kits, so don’t wait too long to get yours!

 
 

DECO studio in Tokyo, busy with classes...

For the past two weeks the DECO studio in Tokyo has been busy with classes. We have been teaching Christmas and New Year's arrangements. Next week, once the Tokyo classes are finished, we will be moving to Osaka and Kyusyu.



It’s the fall season in Japan, the weather is so nice. We get to see the color of the leaves changing, the sunsets are very pretty and the food is so good! I love everything about Japanese food.
These pictures are of some projects that we are working on and some of the beautiful things my mother recently made. I am her biggest fan!



Yukiko

Clay Art for Special Occasions book

It has been very busy schedule at studio since we came back from our trip.

We had very nice get together with everyone for Aya's good-bye party before she left. Thank you so much for everyone who attended the party, and to Gary who hosted at his place. We will all miss Aya very much! Wishing her the best and we will definitely keep in touch!

Ken, a good friend and past DECO employee, came to Hawaii with her family for vacation. It has been over a year since she left and now she is a Mommy. We all got to meet her daughter, Alexie she is super cute and very healthy. It is very amazing how fast the time goes.




I'm off to Japan again for C3 classes. We will be teaching new C3 classes with Christmas & New Year's projects.

Right before I left, we received the Clay Art for Special Occasions book. I hope you will get to see this new book! We are also working on Japanese version of this book which will be out in the coming months.




I will be in Japan until first week of November, I will try to post news from Japan!

Yukiko

We have been looking forward to this trip for so long!

Our trip started with a day layover in NY on the way to Europe. I love NY!!! After landing in Milan, we drove to our friends house in Northern Italy to the village of Mezzolago. After a day of rest we took a drive to see more friends in Bolzano, this was such a unique place in it's culture and history. I have never seen such a bicycle friendly place. Next, we were off to Verona to drop our bags and take the train to the amazing city of Venezia. After 2 days and a night here, we rented a car for the drive through Tusany and Umbria. There are just too many beautiful places to see, places like Firenze, Modena, Siena, Orvieto, San Gimignano, Pisa, Lucca. I didn't think we would be able to, but we made it to Rome. We tried to visit as many different cities without overdoing it, finally, I think we overdid it....

We had such a great time visiting each old town of Italy. Each place is so different; offering so much to see. So many breathtaking structures and architectural marvels around every corner. Oh yea, food and wine, too...

We enjoyed Tuscany with view of grapes & rolling hills for miles, so much, that we found a little villa to stay for a few days. From the beginning, we decided to keep an open itinerary in case we wanted to see more of a specific place. It turned out to be wonderful 17 days in Italy.

After Italy, we had tickets to fly to Paris for 4 nights (our only real planning for this trip.) It was amazing to see this beautiful city of lights. We made a trip to the flea market to look for some vintage & antique things. To my surprise, I didn't shop too much, it was enough just to walk around the city. Of course, there were the distractions of the world famous bread, cheese and wine. After three weeks, we had met so many nice people, ate so much great food and had experiences that we remember forever.

It was a great to turn off from my busy work schedule and just focus on the simple life. Laugh, relax and eating great food. It really opened my eyes to see so many beautiful things and it opens my heart to meet wonderful people. This was the longest time for me to be away from work and I feel fully charged of good energy. Life is good!

38,000 people attending!

The Made in Hawaii festival was a very good turn out, I saw on the news last night that it was a record with 38,000 people attending!

 

The Neal Blaisdel Center was packed with people and it was great to see how many venders were doing so well at the show. It was so good to see all the people who stopped by our booth to say hello. I had a chance to meet many people I haven’t seen for years. Thank you for all your support and encouragement! We would like to thank all the instructors who helped in our booth with greeting customers and doing Make & Take sessions. A great big thank you to all the DECO instructors who participated worked with their creations; these turned out to be some of the best selling items. I would like to send out a special thank you to Chenli, Gary and Margaret who were there to help from the beginning of set up and the last to help in the final tear down.

Since the show I’ve been working on few wedding orders. Chenli has been assisting me with custom orders. There are so many things I need to keep up with. Sometimes I think it is endless….. We are also working on Christmas & New Year’s kit samples, we will be showing these kit pictures in our website sometime in October.

Some new display pieces...

This is what I has been keeping me busy for the last couple weeks. Since we are limited to displaying on the back wall of the booth, we have to be creative when hanging anything, this can be very difficult within the confines of a 20' by 10' space. This year I am attempting to display flowers inside frames made of art board. This material is very light but very sturdy. To accent, I found some live snake grass. There are six different sizes of frames; each with a different color scheme. This is a good way to show of the colors and display many varieties of flowers. It really gives a good idea of what flowers & colors are possible with CLAYCRAFT.

At first, I started work on a green color theme and moved on to yellow & orange. After seeing these progress I felt that I needed some white and, last but not least, PINK. It was very fun to work on these colors and to have the chance to make so many different types of flowers. I think it's safe to say there are about 30 varieties in all.... If I only had more time, I could go on and on making more and more.... I was honestly amazed a how many types of flowers that can be created.

The arrangements that were brought in by the instructors for the Made in Hawaii festival are so nice. Everyone had worked so hard and really made some beautiful pieces. The quality and techniques keep improving each and every year. I am so proud of everyone! Thank you for all your hard work.

We will begin setting up things today for the Made in Hawaii show. It will take a couple of days to get things just right. We are hoping for a good turnout and looking forward to seeing you all at the show.

Yukiko

Sorry I’ve been neglecting my blog…

I guess I should be posting on it everyday? Every other day? Once a week? ;-)

Since returning from Japan, it has been non stop with classes and custom orders. As of yet, I have not had the time to focus on making display pieces for the Made in Hawai`i show, but I intend to do my best to make time. The pressure to get it done is actually good for my creative soul. This year, I will be focusing on COLORS as my theme for the display pieces.

This is my 7th year in participating at the Made in Hawai`i show. This is one of the biggest trade shows of its kind here in O`ahu. Exhibitors at the show are producers of “made in Hawai`i” products and services. This is the only trade show that DECO-Hawai`i is involved in and we do our best to share this experience with all our Instructors and members. Please, if at all possible, come to the show and support local businesses and experience (and taste!) the 3 day event from August 21-23, at the Neal Blaisdell Center.

We have exciting news to announce…Aya and her husband are expecting their first baby! Their bundle of joy will be due in February 2010. We are so excited for them! We support them wholeheartedly and Aya’s decision to focus her time on preparing being a “Mom to be.” Aya has been a part of our DECO family for over a year now, and will miss her ever so generous help here at the studio. Aya, know that our door is always open for you… :-)

Of course, before I sign off, I wanted to share some pieces that I recently made for some special brides. These are orders we get thru our website! I am in no way computer savvy, so it still amazes me this world of technology and how we can all get connected by the Internet.

Yukiko