Snow Days

The project that I am currently working on is a piece made from two identical hump molds. Its important to remember to have molds that are the same otherwise the two pieces won't fit together properly. it's also important to put them together correctly or else it won't look right and it also might fall apart. A third thing that is important to remember is when you are cutting out the top to cut it at an angle so that it won't just fall inside. I am not to sure yet if I want to carve a design into the clay or wait and focus on the colour scheme when i glaze it.

February Post

Four of the six cups I need to finish.

The project I am currently working on is making cups on the wheel. I have made four of the six cups and am ready to trim one of the completed cups. I still need to make two more cups and trim them then they can be fired. Other than being behind there are not really any things I am having trouble with other than some lop-sided cups and one that I made to short. The easiest part of this project has been forming the cups on the wheel although it's kind of hard to get them into the shape that I want.

End of Semester 1

First Project

I for whatever reasons don't have pictures of my other finished projects so this is the best i can do for now. my other projects that I have finished are a coil pot and a candle holder. the candle holder I think is still being fired (or something) and the coil pot i took home before I could upload a good picture of it (oops). I'll upload pictures when I have them.

This is from a blog post that I missed:

• leather hard- clay which has dried sufficiently to be stiff, but is still damp enough to be joined to other pieces.
• bone dry- clay that has completely dried out has not yet been fired. clay forms are most fragile at this stage.

It is important to connect and trim pieces on the wheel when they are leather hard because then they won't collapse while you are working on it.

For  a picture of my coil pot, please follow this link     https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151375560906749&set=a.122519721748.103539.665121748&type=1&relevant_count=1

Glazing Part 2

My piece is finally done! I think it came out looking pretty good. I used a combination of metallic green and blue rutile to glaze it. I applied the glaze by dipping my piece into big buckets of glaze one time for each colour. the glaze kinda covers up my original design and you can't see all of the details so next time i will make the design more obvious so you will hopefully be able to see it through the glaze.

Glazing

I'm almost done with the glazing for my pinch pot it just needs a bit of fixing up so no pictures today. It's important to wash your hands and wipe the dust off of your piece before glazing because if you don't the glaze won't go on properly and won't seep into the piece like it's supposed to. When glazing your work it is always important to apply wax resist to your piece. If you are using a bucket glaze it is important to keep your piece in contact with the glaze for no more than one and a half seconds. You can't brush on a bucket glaze because it was formulated so you can dip your piece in it and if you try to brush it on it will not look right. I will hopefully have pictures of my pot soon.

Working on the Wheel

So I have started to work on the wheel. I have been working at it for about three or four days now. I feel like I'm starting to get better at bringing the clay up and down and also centering the clay but I'm still not very good at opening the clay. I've been trying to get the walls taller but it either keeps breaking or flaring out when it's not supposed to. So far working on the wheel has been fun but hard (and also messy!) my only concern is that I won't get my piece done in time.

Where are you today?

front view

back view

birds-eye view

So my piece is almost done! I just need to glaze it before the final firing. The design of the vase has changed some since I first envisioned it. I originally planned to have the front and the back be the same and not to have handles, but I think the changes I made make it look a lot better. The front still looks a bit rough and if I had time I would go back and smooth it out a bit. Overall I am happy with how the piece is turning out. I start the glazing process next week. More pictures soon. <3