Ceramic shuttle

I am so ridiculously excited about this.

It's been a long time in process. I didn't have much hope when I started it but thought it was worth a shot anyway. The kids and I were hand building some clay LAST YEAR in August and I roughly fashioned a tatting shuttle.

 See that lil thing in the middle of the tray...

Fast forward a month till I fired it to bisque and then fast forward a year and a few months till I got around to glazing it and re-firing it. Since I didn't expect it to work I didn't do a particularly careful job of finishing and smooth it. I was more concerned about placement of the tips because that is important in tatting and when you glaze it, that's really important in it not fusing together.
Wanna see?!

It all came out so well! The tip tension is perfect and it makes the most adorable "tink tink" sound when I wind the thread on and off it. It holds a lot of thread and is very comfortable to tat with.

It is A LOT of work and I was lucky to have it come out so well on my first try. I am so thrilled with it though. I'm kinda  itchy to try it again. :)

Family Ceramics

Back in the day... like in November. :)
I bought some clay
for FHE I tried to teach some basic hand-build techniques


Nev tried to eat the clay.

some of the work from that evening
Then we let it dry for 2 weeks.
Bone Dry clay before fire:

My hand build is sore out of practice, plus I was trying to teach and keep the younger ones from eating the clay and what not.

Fire, we also added a small cup my mom threw at a local art on the lawn thing.
Glaze



Glazed pieces with some large plates that I did the clear coat on (which is pink)
Then Olea helped me Food grade Clear Glaze the pieces

Fire one last time.... oooh lala

Most of the pieces have a found a purpose
Olea's is a q-tip holder in her bathroom
Zurich's is a snack cup

My cup sits next to the kitchen sink for water.
Gary's two dishes hold Tatties downstairs and my keys on the bar.
My lil pink dish holds Tatties upstairs.

Another reason to Tat (as if I needed one)

Last year I started a doily out of Christmas variegated thread to use under a nativity set I made. I never finished the doily. I was making it up as I went along... It probably would have worked, but at some point, a child who shall remain un-blamed/ un-named smeared the thing with pink chap-stick. I was frustrated and threw it in a laundry bag to wash it... but washed it with a bunch of towels. Fuzzies stuck to it.

I thought it was a bigger deal than it was and I almost threw it out. But was just starting to get use out of my pottery kiln and thought it might be good as a stencil or something. As it worked out the fuzzies weren't a big deal. I ironed the doily and picked off the fuzzies and when I glazed a set of serving plates I used it as a glaze stencil.

Then I clear glazed it and fired it. The worst part about ceramics is waiting for the kiln to cool off enough to open it and touch the finished pieces. Maybe this is just me and my lack of patience or excitement to see finished pieces.

I did a set of three serving plates using the tatting as a stencil. My idea was Christmas serving plates that weren't red and green so they could be pretty and useful all year round.

The blue tatting reminds me of snowflakes on the white plates.
I am thrilled with them and look forward to using tatting in raw clay.

Firing fun

Back when I said this (last two paragraphs of the post)... I was ready to fire up the kiln that day, it didn't work out, time passed, I got unsure again... but I finally did the test fire on Sept 2. All seemed well so I painted the ceramic bisque pieces with the kids.

Zurich painted really fast and then took over painting my bowl. I get exhausted with him and gave in, I shouldn't have.

Olea utilized one of the black glazes that had gone dry and was thin, grey and watery (I'd added water and had been intermittently shaking it while fending Zurich off my bowl, but it still hadn't reconstituted) and used it to paint her castle brick. The kid is smart, she did her little castle all herself and it turned out lovely.

I fired it that afternoon with encouragement from a friend.
The pieces all looked pretty much the same after the first firing, except one of the glazes I had as a hand-me-down from my Mother in Law was a specialized glaze that actually glossed over. Good to know.
Gary got home and saw Zurich's work on my bowl and realized it was the one piece for myself and said, "Why did you do that? Don't let him take over." Ya, he's 2.5, I'm a wuss. So I took it outside and sanded it down with sand paper and steel-wool. I couldn't sand the parts that he'd glazed with the specialized glaze (which turned red and glossy).

So then I re-glazed the inside of the bowl with the specialized glaze and put another layer of black in the center and glazed the bottom of the bowl on the outside yellow.
I also added some detail to some of Zurich's pieces and Olea's sun. And re-fired the batch. Better results this time.

So I clear gloss glazed the batch and fired them again.


I think the bowl is usable, the variation in the red is kinda fun with the crisp black and yellow. The little shapes in the bowl are ceramic pieces I think I will try to make into earrings.
But I have learned my lesson. I paint my pieces, Zurich doesn't.
I also learned that I was putting my firing cones in a little wrong (it still worked, but...) so I corrected that on the last firing. I also think that I can do a the matte and the gloss firing in one step rather than two, so I will try that next time.
Here are the glossed pieces. (The random clock is a clock I made for Zurich, he loves clocks and he wanted it in the picture).

Olea's castle

Zurich was thrilled with his "dragon" and "frog" and "airplane" (which I couldn't see the lines on to salvage anything and just left it as he painted it, thankfully he remembers it is an airplane) and wanted to hang them up on his wall like a frog we have hanging in our bedroom. I was happy to help him with this since he wouldn't be carrying them around breaking them (since he'd already chipped the dragon a few times since it came out of the kiln yesterday). The pic of them on the wall are crappy, because I took them with my crappy camera.

So now, time to try some hand build, greenware firing and get some more glaze colors. Blue, pink, purple.... orange etc.

Tonight Gary is taking me to Bombay House to celebrate my birthday. If you've never had a Lassi, you need one. He got his elk yesterday in the archery elk hunt and so he's actually home for my b-day evening and I get elk steaks again. The best present ever, him being home, that is.