A Feathered Favor?

I've already babbled a bit about the raku workshop that I'm going to attend at the end of February. But wait, there's more! The lady teaching it wants us to bring one bisqued and burnished piece so we can try smoke painting. Isn't that a great phrase? I get all sorts of nifty imagery from it. Smoke painting. Cool.

What it really means is that you take bisque, get it really hot in a kiln and then burn the sh*t outta your fingers putting horse hair, pet fur/hair and or feathers on the pot. It burns in very quickly, leaving patterns behind. (I stole this picture from here. The scratchy lines are horse hair. The feather looking thing is, well, a feather.)


The burnishing part of the process is going to be a royal pain, but I'd like to do one or two just for the experience. I have PLENTY of fur from the fluffballs, but I do not have a source for feathers.

Anyone have any that they'd be willing to share? Or know of a good cheap source for natural feathers? I'd really appreciate it, and I'll trade pottery for them!

Today and Yesterday

This is one of my current projects. The clay is still fairly damp - it's the right consistency to trim. After I finished trimming it, I painted on several coats of red underglaze and then used something sharp and shiny to carve squiggles into the clay. This particular clay is little loafers, which is white when fired. The plan is for the bowl to be red, with the white lines showing.


I'm so very proud of this bowl. It will break my heart if something happens to it. It's huge, for me, at 6" or so across. It's also thin and even and not lopsided! I love it so! The first picture is as thrown, the second is after trimming. It's bisqued now and waiting for me to figure out the glaze. So pretty...



I threw this one on the same day. It's a nice bowl. I have no idea what colors to make it yet. Something happened during the bisque fire - there's now a chip on the foot. Grrr. But, it's a minor problem.



And here are some of the things I finished ages ago and never posted...

My first squiggles bowl, from September. The clay is called desert buff and it fires to a very nice oatmeal color. I carved in the squiggles and then dyed them with rust oxide. The rust color darkened to black in the kiln.



Here's the completed zebra dish. It's kind of shaped like a bathtub. The clear glaze is kind of gobby and my orange dancers faded out so I'm not thrilled with it. I do like the little zebras though.



This is how the squirrel vase turned out. The red in him faded away, leaving him a black squirrel. Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio, is known for their black squirrels so I've decided that he's a Kent squirrel.


A lot of the glazes that I use are from Coyote. Their site also features a really cool gallery of things that have been done using their glazes. I REALLY liked the sun bowl done by Terri Baldin. (Go here, it's the third one down.) This bowl was my version of her idea. I used mottled blue by itself, and it came out a bit dark. Next time, I'll also use Oasis.



Given the stack of bisque on my shelf, I'll have more to show soon. Actually, it may take a while. I signed up for a raku workshop, which has me ridiculously excited, and I'm busy making things from raku clay to have bisqued and ready to go by the workshop at the end of February. Do check out the video on raku - that, in a significantly more amaturish fashion, is what I'll be doing soon. The artist that is having MY workshop takes another step and quenches the pot in water after pulling it from the sawdust. This means that I have to use a clay that can withstand some serious man-handling. I REALLY hope stuff turns out! So excited!

Wordless Wednesday - Truth in Advertising

Somewhat Overdue...

Happily, thanks to the small wall heater and 2 space heaters, the studio wasn't freezing tonight. Yay! And we had cherry lambic, which made it even better. That stuff is so good. I have to import it from home - I haven't found it anywhere near here. The upscale grocery has the small raspberry, but not the cherry, or the apple. It's okay - friends supply me when they visit, so I'm good to go for a while.

Here are the finished pieces that I picked up from the studio right before Christmas. There's one more purple bowl, but it has to be re-fired. We have come to the conclusion that there are significant heat fluctuations in the kiln, and if your piece ends up in some areas, you are probably going to have to re-fire it. It's annoying and one day I may commandeer the kiln for a day and figure it out but for now, some things just have to wait longer to come home.

This is a bowl that I originally threw in June. I did a lid for it, and spent HOURS making daisies and painting them only to have something explode in the kiln during the bisque fire and shatter my lid. That was my first important lesson in not getting attached to things before they are actually finished and in your house. The bowl spent months languishing on my shelf, waiting for me to get over it enough to throw away the shards of the lid and move on. It's not particularly fabulous, so I had no problem experimenting with it.


I don't know quite what I was thinking with this one. I love the goldenrod shino and I should have left well enough alone. I'm not fond of the way the stripes came out. I will probably end up donating this one to the empty bowls charity event in February.


OMG, this one was a pain in the keister. I used a fork to make even gouges in the damp clay and then painted the stripes. Then, after the bisque fire, I used wax to keep the glaze out of the stripes and dip glazed it. It took FOREVER. Note to self: NO MORE STRIPES.


I've been playing around with textures and the way the glazes behave on them lately. You can get some really cool effects if you have some idea what you are doing. The teal middle of this one has deep vertical ridges carved into the clay. The effect turned out pretty cool.


One of the ladies in the studio came up with a glaze formula that is just beautiful. It has an aurora aborelus effect that I really love. This bowl is me playing with the colors somewhat. It turned out okay, but I like hers better.


I did a larger one very similar to this one a while ago, but with green and someone said they really loved it. So, I did this smaller one except now I can't remember who I'm supposed to give it to. *sigh* It'll sit on the mantle with everything else until I figure it out.


This is another bowl that I bisqued months ago and it hung out on my shelf while I pondered how to glaze it. I goofed while trimming and removed a chunk of the rim that I didn't intend to remove. The only way I could think to fix the mistake was to cut chunks out the rest of the way around and make it have a jagged effect. Now, I like it and will probably do it on purpose to something else.


These next two were another color experiment. I threw them from the same clay on the same day and was curious how much of a difference I'd see with different application methods. The first one was dipped in glaze first, allowed to dry thoroughly and then brushed. I did the opposite on the second one. I love the super shiny finish on the first one, but the color on the second.



This poor thing got shoved to the back of my shelf and forgotten. Then I cleaned and found it, squished against the wall. It was round when I threw it, honest! This is another color experimentation - we just got a red into the studio and we were all dying to know what it looked like. This particular red looks better on the dark clays.



More to come soon!

Wordless Wednesday - I'll Help!

Happy New Year!

In spite of the freezing fog, frigid temperatures and semi-crazed drivers, I made it home safely. Yay!

Christmas was good. I drove straight to mom and dad's and arrived about 11:30 am. My brother came over around 12:00 and mom got up around 12:30. We sat and chatted and ate until around 5, then tore into the presents. I ended up falling asleep on the couch so my Christmas ham dinner was at around midnight.

My treasure this year is the cobalt blue kitchen aid mixer. Oh, I loves it! I've been asking for one for ages and was about to break down and get it myself when Santa Mom decided that I'd been good this year. Mom also sponsored a draft horse in my name at a shelter here so we get to go on a tour and maul the animals at some point. That'll be nice too. I miss spending time with horses. It's ironic that I found a shelter to volunteer at outside of Chicago, but can't find anything in rural North Carolina. They exist, but people (as usual there) don't follow up worth a hoot and I haven't managed to connect with them. Grr. I'll try again shortly. Anywho, I used to volunteer at the place we'll be touring so it'll be good to see some familar faces and also what they've changed since I was there last.

This week has been a whirl of social activities and catching up with friends and family - something every day. Yesterday was particularly great - I went to breakfast with a group of friends from college. Around noon we freed up the table and moved to my friend T's house. I ended up leaving there around 4:30 in the afternoon. It's the first time we've all been together in probably 10 years and I'd forgotten how much fun we all had together. My sides hurt from laughing and it felt really good to realize that we can pick up right where we left off, in spite of marriages, divorces, moves, children... you know, life. We will not let so much time go by before our next gathering.

I have a bunch more stuff on the agenda for my visit, and some things that I know aren't going to happen - the time always goes faster than I think it should.

Special bonus - my aunt and uncle got a wireless router for Christmas, so my iphone is already set up for it and my laptop will be as soon as I retrieve it from mom and dad's. Yay for having use of my own computer! (My uncle is a solitaire JUNKIE and spends HOURS on their computer playing. I expect my aunt to acquire her own computer shortly.)

Anywho, whatever you end up doing, be safe this New Year's Eve and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

All Is Bright

Nothing is calm. I'm running around here like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get ready to leave for home. Cards? Mailed. Shopping? Done, as of about 2 hours ago. Laundry? Last load's in the dryer now. Kitchen? Clean, except for sweeping the floor. Cats? Box scooped, water fountain cleaned, food out, more litter and food purchses. Check. Wrapping? In progress now. Packing? Um. That's next. Loading? After packing. So much for leaving before dark.


I set the alarm in my iphone last night. The one thing I really don't like about the iphone is the alarm. If someone calls and you miss the call, or texts, or if you have an app that sends alerts, that supersedes the alarm. So, I missed a call since I was asleep and therefore my alarm didn't go off until I woke up and looked at the phone and cleared the missed call out. Very helpful. So I'm running about 5 hours behind. I've decided that I probably needed the sleep.


I picked up 11 things that were glazed and finished yesterday at the studio. So, one of these days I'll manage to post all of my finished stuff. One day... It's going to be after the fourth 'cause that's when I'll return here.

The lights are someone's house a few miles from here. I was on my way to work on Christmas shopping and stopped for a quick look. My pictures don't do it justice - they have several acres of decorations. I think my favorite is the cannon that "fires" an explosion of lights. Very cool.

Well, I'm off to run around in circles some more before heading out. Have a wonderful Christmas! (And any other holiday you may be celebrating!)