Glazes for Dummies

I fully intended to write a blog post yesterday, but I just never made it to the computer. It was a really good weekend, though. I got to hang out with my friend Erin (of eef-etc), drinking wine and eating pizza, and not really watching stuff on Netflix because we were too busy yapping. It was our intention to get together to geek out over marathon episodes of Doctor Who and some other UK tv shows, but we just never got past talking, which was fine. Drinks and conversation with Erin are always a good way to spend an evening. Plus, we got to discuss my new website that she's working on for me, which I'm super excited about!

I've been thinking for ages that I needed a real website for my work, to serve as a portfolio, business landing page, and sort of portal to all my social media and photos scattered across the web. I considered building one myself, but then I remembered my last foray into webpage design... sometime back in the 90's when people still had Geocities pages. (!!!) Page after page of sparkly animated gifs, crappy midi music, anime drawings, and bad poetry! I shudder at the memories. I never did learn more HTML than how to make text bold and italic (and now there's buttons for those things), and I knew if I waited until I had time to teach myself how to put a simple blogger or wordpress page together, it would just never happen. Good thing Erin does these things for a living! I love having talented friends:) So as soon as I write the copy for the site, and update my resume, I should have a real website!

I also managed to study up on glazing a bit more, reading the appendices and skimming back over the rest of Mastering Cone 6 Glazes again. Once I started playing with the Glaze Master software, it all finally started to click. The Digitalfire Material database was incredibly helpful for understanding all of the materials I was using, and I wish I'd remembered it sooner. I realized that my brain has just gotten very lazy, and looking at long lists of numbers and chemical formulas just wasn't making sense to me without a lot of effort. Being able to look up materials and have their chemical makeup broken down for me in plain English really helped. (I always joke that I'm an artist - I don't do math!) I tell my students that everything worth doing takes hard work, but apparently I'm a huge hypocrite. Glaze chemistry doesn't come easily to me, and I was getting frustrated because I was actually having to do work and research to understand what I was doing, instead of finding some easy fix for our unstable studio glazes.

I think I'm on the right track now, and I've got a new set of test tiles sitting on the shelf, ready for tonight's glaze firing. I'll post pics of the results, and then on to more testing! If I learn anything useful from all this, I'll be sure to share it with you. So stay tuned, maybe there'll be some new fancy glaze recipes to share.

Another photo mega post - raku, new doll jars, and Jeanette Zeis spoon trade

I've got too many pictures of ceramic related things not to do another blog post. That's pretty much my motivation anymore -  a lot of backlog of pics on my iphone and camera = time to blog. Maybe one day I'll commit to a more regular blog posting, but in the meantime, here are pretty things to look at.

We had our first raku firing at Beech Grove Clay Works today. It went really well, and we got some excellent results. I even mixed up a raku glaze recipe from Tracey Boone's pottery blog, which got a lot of reduction and did exactly as she said it would. I was pretty excited about that. Thanks for the recipe, Tracey!

Raku firing is so exciting! All the smoke and flames, and getting to see the pieces red hot like that. I can't wait for the next one, I'm hooked!

I made some cute mini doll jars that I'm going to fire at a friends house tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about them, and I'm dying to make more.

I'm also firing some new test tiles tomorrow with a base glaze and varying amounts of mason stains. I did some yellow, and some that are either blue or violet (the mason stains were old, and not all of them were well labeled.) I'll post more on those later if they come out looking halfway decent.

Remember those spoons I made? And the ones Jeanette Zeis made? Jeanette liked my spoons! And I adore hers! So we agreed to trade. I am so excited about getting to trade with her. I now have a ceramic spoon to add to my collection of lovely handmade ceramics from other artists. I admit, I got the better end of the deal, as her spoons are a lot nicer than mine. But I'm happy that she liked mine! She chose the green superhero girl spoon. I hope she enjoys it as much as I love mine!

Finally, here are some pics of Maddy, just because. She is adorable, and she's getting so big! I am dreaming of the day I get to bring her to the studio to throw with me.

Grandma took a huge tutu and added ribbons so she could wear it as a big fluffy dress. She likes to play peekaboo by pulling the tulle up over her face.

Her aunt Mariah made her a huge leaf pile to play in. She wasn't terribly impressed, though.

Bear baby.