Julie's Beads

Raku sugar skulls, ceramic bones, prasiolite onions, labradorite facted beads, sterling silver chains and findings and sore fingers.  This piece was VERY satisfying.

BO Nan ZA!

Work at Home

Class today.  I am taking in a pot I made at home.  Just a small part of what Mom's been putting up with. :)

Tea for Two

An assignment from last handbuilding class.  I am not a huge fan of tiny teapots, but these cups are wonderful.  Mom and I used them, the feel of the rounded side and smooth reduction glaze (in iron red) in your hand is wonderful.  I would like to make some tea or coffee cups like this again, slightly larger, and with tabs instead of a traditional handle.

The tray was fired upside down to give the bottom a perfectly smooth finish for use on fine furniture.  Rough, unfinished clay off the kiln shelf can be murder on furniture.

In the latest class we've made mortar and pestle and now a candlestick.  We'll be making a garden totem next.  Normally I am not a fan of purely decorative work but I am looking forward to this next job. 

Appliance Abuse

Lookit Them Piggies!

Heather's Tiki Jar

My sister has a lanai and a pool and a tiki bar.  And this just seemed appropriate.

Jerk

Thrown with Shaner White

And Plant City strawberries.  Man.  Only in Florida.  And yes, I ate some.  Nom.

 

Stop at the Store

The home improvement store.  I can be made so happy with PVC pipe cut into lengths.  I intend to make some rollers for clay with hot glue while I wait for sterling findings and handmade beads to show up in the mail.  Oh, Julie!  I so love your Raku skulls and your ceramic bones.

A whole bunch of things will be emerging from my mind, heart and fingers in the next days and weeks and the anticipation gives me such a lift!

Mom's Roses

I made the stamp in North Carolina (thanks doctor Tim!) and the vase in Florida.

Coil Crazy

It does seem appropriate that a curly-headed woman loves to make this particular type of  bowl.  I do love the melted stained glass in the bottom of these.  I have been doing that a lot lately.

This series of pics features one of my favorite tools.  The Dremel gets any rough spots from the firing, and possibly dirty kiln shelves, off the bottom so the bowl doesn't scratch the furniture. 

This bowl is probably the twelfth in the series started when my first handbuilding teacher asked us to show up the next week with a terracotta pot to make our first coil piece in and I showed up with a 13" planter.  She told me while it was good to think big, I had probably bitten off more than I could chew.  The first three had a few rim issues because I was more interested in decorative scalloped edges than having the rims food safe (fractures in coils can crawl and bacteria can grow... not good) and the interiors lacked the fine smooth finish that can take me a good hour to achieve with fingers and rubber rib. 

Almost everyone I love will eventually have one of these.  Maybe I will even sell one or two eventually.  Every one is like a snowflake.  

My first three forms - just terracotta planters from Lowes and Home Depot - were sold before the great migration. I now have two identical planters.  I want to find a round one like Mom's light blue cloud bowl.  I do like a round shape!

I do love the way the glazes and glass worked so well together on this one.  Opening a kiln is like Christmas.

XO.

Sybil

 

Yeah

Not Lost Marbles

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2012/01/good-fences-make-good-neighbors.html

Nip!

Servicey

Substitutions baby. :)

http://consumerist.com/2011/12/substitution-cooking-ingredients-for-stuff-youre-missing.html

Made You Look!

http://www.streetartutopia.com/?p=5982

Yes!

Present for Me

Vince Sansone is the Director of the Pottery Porgram at Crealde School of Art and has been throwing for forty years.  This is one of his.  It's a second.  Sigh.  A cat can sleep in it comfortably.

worthy

Bud