The kiln wasn't quit cool enough yesterday for my normal blog post, but it is cool enough now. I have at least one more to run this week before the Brandywine Festival of the Arts this weekend. It sounds like it's going to be really cold in this area over the weekend so what better way to spend it than indoors with some fantastic artists.

This kiln has the last of the lavender work I made a while back plus a whole lot of crabs. Also on this top shelf is my tester mug for the Brandywine show that I am making for Rob who runs the show. I'm really excited with how it looks in the peek. Now to glaze a bunch more!

I feel like it was October and I blinked and now we're in mid-December. I've done so many shows in the last two months and only have one left.

My day job has been insanely busy the last few weeks with a new client. The week before Thanksgiving I got a cold which is no big deal, but it settled in my ears and that's made me deaf. I've gotten a glimpse into my future of constantly asking people to face me and repeate themselves louder.

All of this has made me pull back on what I actually need to get done before my last show (Brandywine Holiday Festival of the Arts December 21 and 22). I have some custom mugs I'm making for the gentleman who runs the Brandywine show plus I needed a few more crab mugs. Aside from that the goal is - get everything bisqued and fired. More end of year stats coming in the next couple of weeks, but with these mugs that means I have made 302 mugs this year. That's nearly 100 more than I made last year and I don't believe I'm going to have much inventory left after the show next weekend (she says totally jinxing herself).

This weekend I will be out in western Maryland at Kris Kringle in Hagerstown. This is my first time doing this show and I hope to see you if you're out west.

Earlier in the summer I trimmed my lavender plant and froze some blooms that I am now going back and using. It always makes everything smell so nice when I'm using lavender in the studio.

You may remember a few months ago I was using my hex wallie and I accidentally made a bowl that was a Star of David. I'm finally getting around to making some Hannukah Bowls in that shape!

New ring dishes with a bird. Why? Because its cute.

If you've been following for a while or if you've looked back to last year, you know that mugs are a big part of my business. Last year mugs were 27% of what I sold and this year they are on track to be an even larger percentage. I made a plan for this year based on what I sold last year, but then started to realize that I need more. So these last couple weeks has been A LOT of mugs.




I'm appreciative of making all of these mugs though because it's been great practice. Making the same shape over and over has really let me refine what I'm doing and continue to make my process work for me.




This isn't it though. This is it for the mugs I make in Laguna 60, but I still need to make more camping mugs in Kentucky Mudworks Brown Bear too. I've gotten in the habbit now of only working in one clay body at a time and the deep dive into brown bear things is next.

Remember the hexagons from my last post? As I was looking at them I started seeing Frankenstein's block head. I think I love this one even more than the ghost!

I've wanted to make a ghost mug for a while. I kept circling on how I could do it and then it occurred to me that I have a couple of extruder dies that might work. I ended up using the one that looks kind of like a pasta noodle. I still have a little more refinement to do, but I think it's so cute. I did this in laguna 60 and my plan is to glaze these with Amaco Snow which will have a nice sparkly effect with the specks from the clay.




I started with a bunch of extruded pieces that were all roughly the same height.




then I cut out bottoms to match them.




I had also extruded some hexagons...more on these later this week.

Last week in NY I made a few ghosts and I'm happy to say they all made it home.

I might be out of control on the 3D scandi things. I had this ornament that just wasn't fancy enough and turned it into a 3D ornament. I think I want to make this glittery.

When I was at retreat with Michael Harbridge back in May, I was sitting with Debi from De La Designs and had the idea for a scandi pumpkin that was like her scandi trees. When I made the trees, I remembered that I hadn't made them yet. I learned a lot in my first attempt. The first is that I need to make sure that the bottoms are flat. The second is that I probably should have used a 60 degree cut instead of a 45. All that said, I'm still really excited by this and want to make a few more. I'm thinking a witches hat would be really cool like this too.

How cute are these tiny little scandi trees? I could make a whole forrest of these.

I had a request for a colander fruit bowl from a friend. My first attempt was much wider, but she was looking for something taller and narrower. This, of course, is upside down, but I neglected to take a picture before I added the feet.


I accentuated the seem with a second stamp.




This is the first bowl that was much wider. I still really like it and might end up keeping it for myself.




I really like the pattern of the holes on this one.

These turned out sooooo cute! I used the Christmas in July Mystery Box Cutters from De La Designs. Debi did a demo on Clayshare, but also provides step by step pictures on her web site. Making these was time consuming, but not actually hard. I can't wait to make a few more. I used the Gingerbread and Traditional house cutters. In this first go round I kept them separate, but I think in future iterations I might mix them.

I ended up making the gingerbread a luminary and left the traditional as a cookie jar.

I cannot look at this tree and not see Dr. Seuss characters winding around it. It's made by smooshing balls of clay onto it.

Ironically one of my snowmen "melted". I noticed him leaning and it was a cute lean, but one morning I came into the studio and he was on the floor. Sad. I did do something a bit different than I've done before - I let the pieces setup overnight prior to attaching them. I find that the bottom pumpkin can't handle the weight when its too wet and this clay was very wet. The baby snowman is because I had extra clay and so I cut 3 more of the smallest ones. I was going to make pumpkins, but then the baby snowman popped into my head.




This is how they look as they setup overnight.




I might try making some in laguna 60 with the intent of glazing them with snow. I love how the speckles come through on other things and I think it would work here.

Is it time for trees already? I need to make a few of these and they take so long that it is! I started by sitting and making just a lot of leaves. I think I made 40-45 of each size. That's more than I need for one tree, but less than is likely needed for two. It's not an exact science because the leaves don't go on the same way twice. I have a tv in my studio so I just sat for like an hour and made leaves.




Next I put clay around the form. It's important to have paper under there so you can take it off the form later and it still has something helping it stay in shape. The smoothing doesn't need to be perfect because it will be covered with leaves.




I start by putting leaves on the bottom and then add rows going up to the top.




Adding the leaves is actually a fairly quick process if you've made them all first. Probably only takes 20 minutes to add them all and shape it. I will let it setup under plastic for a bit before taking it off the form. I find if I take it off too soon the bottom sags a bit.

We were up at the cabin last week and the lily pads were in full bloom. You might remember last year I sent my husband out on the canoe to get them for me, but this year I have a new kayak/paddleboard and was able to do it myself. I probably looked ridiculous to anyone watching. It's a sit on top and it's really stable because it's meant to be both a kayak and a paddleboard. So I would pick the lily pad that I wanted and steer myself towards it. Then I'd put my foot in the water and try to catch the stem between my toes. The smaller ones I could break with just my foot, the larger ones I'd have to pass from foot to hand and pull hard. Again, I probably looked ridiculous, but it got the job done.

I've learned from the past that I need to use the lily pads within a couple of days (and to keep them sealed in the refrigerator). I made a few different plates and platters. These lily pads were definitely more brittle than some of the ones in the past and only a few were reusable. The rest were torn to pieces to pull them off.




I used a mixture of 50/50 iron oxide and gerstley borate on this bowl. I know that I'm going to love the look when it comes out of the kiln, but this is soooo messy. Iron oxide just gets on everything and has to be wiped down multiple times. This is why I don't use it more often.

One other thing - I was careful to not put the water I was using from this back into my Cink. Last year I put the water in and within a couple of weeks the water stunk so bad. It was also so very gross when I cleaned out all the traps.

I decided I wanted to try some texture on a few of the ornaments I made last week. The first one I tried carving, but it was a little too thin in areas. Then I remembered my DiamondCore Tools Impression Set that I bought a couple of months ago and haven't had the time to try out.

I had a bit of a learning curve figuring out how to make things symetrical one a shape that isn't the same diameter at any given spot, but I like how they came out and I think that the glaze will go a long way to hide some of the imperfections that I'm probably the only one who can see anyway. I need to use these stamps more, it's amazing how easily they all fit together and create patterns.

I saw a post a while back on these forms from I Make Stuff. The actual post was about making bells and I thought that was a really interesting idea. I saved it, but did nothing about it. A few weeks ago I was thinking about it again and discovered that they had similar forms for making a couple of different types of Christmas ornaments and other shapes. I decided to taket he plunge and try them.

I made a couple as a test run before we went up to the cabin. I wanted to know what tools I might need to bring with me. The first one I made I had to scrap, but these are number 2 and 3. The learning curve wasn't all that steep once I realized how key corn starch is.




This is what the forms look like when empty.




Corn starch! Corn starch! Corn Starch! I found that for these I needed to add it every time.




Start by forming a ball of clay roughly to the shape of the form that you're using. The star one was the hardest to do this with, but doing this makes sure that you'll have enough clay in all the crevices.




Smoosh down the clay so it hits the bottom.




Use a knife or a wire to do an initial cut off of the clay. I found that a fettling tool was especially good for this.




Corn starch either the press part of the form or the clay. Doesn't matter which, but if you don't you'll be sorry! Push down the presser and wiggle it side to side. You want to make sure that it's pushing the clay into the form and also thining it out a bit.




Use your knife to cut back the sides to the edge of the form. Be careful when you're doing this because it can move out. I found that having the edges between 1/4 and 1/2 of a centimeter was enough to score and join.




If you do have a spot where the edge gets a little too thin (top right) you might still be able to save it if your second side doesn't have the same problem. I neglected to take a picture of it, but slip and score the clay while it's still in the form. If you forget, pop it back in. You're much less likely to mishapen it if you do this in the form than in your hand.




The form pops out of the frame and then you can take away each of the side pieces individually. Take off the side pieces slowly so you don't distort the clay. If you forgot to corn starch, now is when you'll know.




Make two of these and then put the two sides together. It may look ugly when you first do it, but that's ok.




Smooth, smooth, smooth your seems. This is as far as I took it while it was super wet. I left these on a ware board to dry and went over them a second time to smooth them more.




I was trying to re-use the corn starch that was on my work surface then I started cracking myself up because I was making what looked like cocaine lines. This is the closest I will ever come to actually doing cocaine, lol.




Twelve little ornaments all smoothed out.




I made more of the teardrop ones. Once again my imagination was going as I was looking at what I was doing. That's all I'm going to say about that.




Once they were all smoothed out and had firmed up a bit I put them into my wet box. I packed them in close because they have to make the 6 hour drive home. Here's hoping I don't lose any.




I tried to add texture to one and it didn't really work all that well. I felt like I couldn't push hard enough without distorting the texture. I think carving or slip trailing would be better for these adding texture, but I didn't bring any of those tools with me so experimenting with that will have to wait.




The star wasn't all that much harder to do, but it was way more joins to smooth out so it took longer.




All in all I'm really impressed with these tools and will be thinking about more things to make with them. I think the teardrop one is totally going to end up as a fishy at some point.