Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads

Christmas Day is a week tomorrow!  So I figured it was time to finally post some photos of these Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads that I took in early November.

I sculpted these "Mr Wonderful" ornaments back in 2012, while binge watching Shark Tank on You tube, but somehow never got around to seeing how these looked hanging in a tree. 

Here are the 10 I had left, laid out on the lawn:

They were each handsculpted, so  some look more like him than others! 

A Hawthorn Bush that still had some red berries on it seemed like a great place to hang them - the branches have spiky thorns to match Kevin's prickly television persona. 

Something about seeing these heads floating in the midst of a November shrub cracks me up.

As an aside, our place is relatively near the Haskap berry farms run by the guy who pitched his industry on Dragons' Den in 2013, to be told by Kevin "no one's ever gonna know what the [haskap berry] is, even after you're dead".   Here's a youtube clip of that.  

What a berry-grinch Kevin is!  People are planting these things all over the place in our area.  We have some in our own garden, the berries are delicious.   And Haskapa now even has opened their own storefront in Mahone Bay. 

An example of the back of one of the ornaments - they're all hollowed out.  These were made before I started using ornament hooks for pottery, as in this year's ornaments

 These next pics have been posted before, but these are the ones that I took to my two venues last month:

These three heads went to The Dart Gallery in Dartmouth

And these two went to Jenny Jib in Lunenburg

I'm not sure what price I put on the Kevin O'Leary heads, but I think the largest one was $45, and the smallest $35.

For 2016 I'm excited to try making some Celebrity Head Planters!

New Christmas Ornaments at The Dart Gallery, November 18th, 2015

Here are pics of ornaments I dropped off at The Dart Gallery in Dartmouth on November 3rd, along with some other new pieces.

I love making Christmas ornaments and have made hundreds over the years: clay ones since 2009, and papier mache ones since 2005.  I'm pretty excited with how they are evolving.

This year for the first time I'm using ornament hooks! Thanks, France at Dragonfire Pottery and Supplies for telling me about these!  So now all my ornaments are finished underneath (thanks, husband Brendan, for telling me I should do this).  Unless they're standing on feet, they're mostly all glazed underneath too - which means firing them with on stilts, something I just started doing this year.  

All of my ornaments are handsculpted stoneware, and all of these new ones are signed with my initials.  Clay is a heavy medium, but I've tried to make them as light as possible by hollowing them out as much as I can.

There are 18 of the new ones at Dart, most are $25 each but there are few smaller ones for $20.

Owl, sitting bunny, mushroom (these first three are the smaller $20 ones), spotted frog, fox

Close up of the mushroom and sitting bunny from the above pic

Giraffe, owl with santa hat, another fox, 2 sheep and a squirrel

Two doves

Pig

Polar bear

Puffin with Santa hat

Crouching bunny

And last but not least, a Sullivan's Pond Goose with Santa Hat

 All of the above ornaments come with a simple ornament wire, ready to hang, as well as one of my new homemade tags (photo paper + inkjet printer) if desired.

Here's an action shot of a fox ornament in a live tree, though the tags at Dart say "handsculpted in Nova Scotia Canada":

I also dropped off a selection of older ornaments, most are $15 - $20 each.  Here's a group shot with most of them.  What have we got here... three chickens, a couple of ghosts, a few skulls, white rat, meerkat, blue jay, duckling, santa head, alien, 4 doves in 2 styles, pumpkin, jack o'lantern... and 3 Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads (more about them at the end of this post).

Here's a flying bat that missed the class photo:

 And a small flying dove: 

This flying goose was actually made this year, but in the old style - open on the bottom with a heavy wire through it.

And here's one of the skulls in action.  

Back to the Kevin O'Leary Christmas Tree Heads.  I made a dozen or so of these tributes to "Mr. Wonderful" in 2012 while binge watching Shark Tank, thinking I'd get into doing celebrity ornaments.  I still plan on it, and have a few other people in mind, but probably not for this season.   I'll do another post with more pics of the photo shoot fun I had finally hanging the ornaments in a hawthorn tree outside.  Meanwhile here is one example of a group shot:

And here's a shot of the 3 heads that I took to  Dart:

The Dart Gallery has a couple of very nice shows starting soon.  "Le Jardin Magique" opens November 19th 7 - 9pm, running until Dec 2nd, and features paintings by Estelle Thomson, this year's Gold winner artist for both Visual Artist and Yoga Instructor in The Coast's Best of Halifax awards.

Opening in early December and running until Christmas is "Dart Wars", a group show inspired by the latest Star Wars movie release.