Sneak peak of the kiln before its done cooling. LOVING the peacock bowl on the top. Also looks like my little spoon fell off its stilts. The plate with the roses has been waiting to first get in the bisque and now the glaze kiln for a year. I love the seaweed glaze with the green roses.

It's spring! Or at least I want it to be. This week it's been pretty cold and wet, but a lot of things starting to bud and bloom. I decided to make more butterfly feeders/garden flowers because they're just so pretty in the garden. I made them in a slightly different style than I have before where there are two layers vs one just to do something a little different.




The bottom has a hole or collar where the garden stake will get epoxied in after it's fired. I'm already seeing bright flowery glazes.

I've made fruit plates before. My lemon plate came out awesome and I wanted to re-create. My strawberry plate came out terrible and ended up in the trash. I decided to make some more and added in a grape plate. The lines are done with Mayco Designer Liner. Some time this week I'll be glazing with Stroke and Coat. I'm also thinking I'll try to draw a few more fruits, maybe peaches?




I'm still trying to clean up where the designer liner splattered. Last time I had this happen it affected the final product. I might draw some leeves or something in there to cover it up.




I feel like this one needs some more. Strawberry leaves are hard to draw, but maybe some strawberry flowers?




More lemons

Last year some time I attempted to hand build a large planter. I added the bottom and the foot too soon and it sagged. Then I flipped it out too soon and it crumbled. I decided to make a second attempt at this. I'm roughly following one of the Clayshare classes on how to do this.

I used Laguna 60 clay and rolled it out to 1/2 inch thick and then cut it into strips the width of a yard stick. I used a bat as my guide for the circumference. Started off with two rows straight up and down then I started angling them in. I ended up with 8 rows to get to an opening that was only a few inches wide. I let it dry until when I was pressing on the rim it didn't give too much.


Once the clay was dry enough I covered the hole and added a foot ring. The foot ring was just another piece like I used to built the walls. I added coils outside and inside the foot ring to give it strength. I left it like this for 2 days to let it setup enough.




I was testing it frequently to determine when it would be dry enough to flip. I was waiting for it to be dry enough to not collapse, but still wet enough to blend in the bottom on the inside. I let it setup for a day once I flipped it.




I think this is going to end up being a part of my next garden stack so I wanted it to fit into the river theme. So I made it look like the bottom of the river with rocks.

I finished this sweater a couple of weeks ago, but I was travelling for work and then when I got home I didn't unpack :) Gone (at least for now) are the days when I have to unpack when I get home so that I can do laundry so that I can repack on Sunday.




I made this pattern up as I went which really could have been disastrous, but it turned out really well. This could create false confidence to not having a plan in the future. Also it's been too long and I didn't write it down so it's just gone from my head.