Butterflies and the New Glazes

I opened the kiln and what to my wondering eyes should appear. These, I love these colours. These colours are exactly what I was hoping for. The chocolate brown background is my own glaze formulation and when it behaves it is lovely. The butterflies are commercial glazes that I've been working on getting applied in a way that I am happy with. And I am happy with these.

These I am not so very happy with. The colours are nice but they've wiped out the texture on most pieces I fired. They work beautifully just as they are on my stoneware trays. I'm pretty sure I know how to fix this. But, dang, I was hoping that I'd get lucky first time round on the porcelain. I could always change over to the stoneware, but I like the porcelain for beads and pendants. We are friends. We've developed a relationship over the years. I don't want to break up.

If you want to see how I made these you should hop over to the Beads of Clay blog on Tuesday. Actually you should probably stop by there before then. Lots of lovely clay things happen over there.

I do like the autumn colour of that coral on brown up there. I was all in the mood for it a few days ago when our weather was actually tolerable. Now? Back to the upper 90s and humid. Yucky.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I'm off to make 7 dozen 2" daisy buttons. Sounds exciting, heh?

A blaze of glaze

Ah, my neck and back ache. I've spent the day hoping to get this same glaze effect a second time on the new stoneware clay. But I've thrown a little twist into it by introducing a new pattern, a detailed pattern that needs to be glazed differently.

There are lots of ways to apply glaze to pottery. You can dip it in a big bucket, spray it, air brush, paint it on. Recently I've been painting it on to pots (jewelry components too) because it's really the only way to get the detail right. But painting it on has been a real trial and error and royal pain in the backside development process for me. I make all my own glazes and they don't formulate naturally to the techniques I want to use. But at last I think I've found the right combination of ingredients to make most of my glazes flow like paint, sort of.

The new batik pattern I'm using is pretty detailed and requires a fair bit of attention to what I'm doing. Attention to detail is not always my strong suit. And this isn't really like painting. It's more like coaxing the glaze to go where I want it to go rather than an actual brush stroke. Oh, and I have to do it twice for each piece in each colour, so by the end of the day....well let's just say that my natural tendancy for colourful language is enhanced.

A few trays and dishes have been committed to trial by fire and I've got my fingers crossed. And there are a couple of new glazes in there. I'm having a bit of a problem thinking about the acorns in other than natural acorn colours. Really, can you envision a purple acorn?

I've got another glaze experiement going on for an 'ocean green' that has been described by others as 'putrid' brown. This of course intrigued me and away I go experimenting without even testing the original formula. My tweek may indeed be putrid as well. But I'll let you know tomorrow. I am always optimistic, ....until I open the kiln.

And I do not necessarily have fate on my side this week. Alice (miss wiggle bottom) and I collided in the studio last week and the kiln god went arse over appetite. Many pieces are there waiting to be reassembled. But for now, just his earless head is left to gaurd my work. I sure hope this isn't a bad bad omen.

Hold me back, please

I just pulled these pots from the kiln this morning and now all I want to do is glaze every pot in exactly this same way. But that would be boring in the end. There's a little work to be done on the brown glaze, applying it in a way that gets the richness I want but doesn't run all over the kiln shelves. I hate grinding glaze off kiln shelves. But overall, I am happy with these. Two firings in a row and I am happy. I am pretty sure I am due for a firing disaster soon.

Here's a closer look at the blue green glaze. It's the same one I use on porcelain and the same one that goes a yuck colour on another clay that I use. This is a new stoneware clay for me and much whiter and so far, pretty good working qualities. You might well ask why I've switched clays when I've deadlines looming. And that is a very good question, one others have in fact posed. Well, the short answer is I took a punt with one of my suppliers and had shipped their in house white stoneware. The other supplier is 8 hours away in Wichita and does not ship. I buy there because I love a great excuse to see my daughter. But neither of us has time right now. So necessity is the mother, right? And it worked out. And I can't tell you how relieved I am!

I've been making these small dragonfly dishes for years. I love dragonflies and I've always loved this stamp that I carved. It was one of my first ever and it's gone through many renditions. But this is the first time I've gotten the glaze the way I really wanted it. There are actually two from this kiln that came out virtually the same. OOPs, shush, I may be tempting fate here.

And this is Alice. She would like me to think that she's been keeping me safe from thunder storms today. She spent most of the afternoon out in the studio just about as close to my chair as possible. We've been having a lot of thunder and lightning and some pretty torrential rain and high winds. So in fact , I think sweet Alice is actually just hiding out with me. Meanwhile her big brother Bob knows that the safest place is in the closet.

Have a great tomorrow all, LeAnn

My love hate relationship with chemistry

Knowing a little glaze chemistry when you make all your own glazes is a necessary evil. On the one hand I love tweeking things a bit to get different effects. It appeals to my inner mad scientist. On the other hand there is that sense of loss, and the mourning that comes with it, when you've sacrificed another piece to the kiln god.

This glaze on these beads is my favourite. I could quite happily use it on just about every porcelain piece I make. But then that would be just plain boring. This is the colour I want on the insides of some of the barnacle pots. It would be just about perfect.


This is what happens when you put that same glaze on the stoneware the barnacle pots are made from. Bleck, yuck, .... expletives, profanity. It is just not anywhere close. I've tried all sorts of things to correct this problem and get that beautiful glaze that is on the porcelain pieces.

And voila! The light bulb in my head brightened momentarily. That's the light bulb that is mostly on the lowest dimmer setting. Months of fiddling and it was just a matter of layering one glaze over another. Now I just want to put this on everything. I'm thinking I need a glaze intervention.

This pot was in my last kiln firing. It has taken me a few days to decide that this will do. Well it sort of has to given that I've got a lot to do before studio tour. Now I just have to fix up the white breaking rust glaze on the rim of the pot. But I actually have an idea and a plan. Crisis mode makes my mind sharper. Or maybe I just am willing to compromise more.

Oh and have I told you about my love hate relationship with white backgrounds? Another time perhaps.

On another note entirely, I am absolutely overwhelmed with all of your very warm and kind comments on my last blog post. You are indeed a generous lot and I truly value your company here in blogland.

Hugs to all!

Back Yard Chemistry

What is that man doing in my back yard? No, he's not testing the pool water. We don't have one of those but given the hot weather it would be nice. That is Peter testing the specific gravity (or something like that) of his latest batch of beer. It's a porter I'm told. Very nice I'm sure. But give me a glass of shiraz. Beer makes me burp! But a man's got to have a hobby. And there is a beer brewing brother coming into town soon. The competition is stiff and we have to have some of the good stuff on hand.

Meanwhile, I'm doing my own back yard chemistry. New glazes, new pieces. It always amazes me that something that looks so uninteresting in it's unfired state can come out all shiny, and hopefully nice. I'm never sure what the proper invocation is when I fire a kiln. But, may the kiln gods be with me tomorrow night. The proof is in the pudding, so they say. Wednesday will be pudding time.

Barnacle Vase

Parts of it I like and parts I don't. One of the problems with working with the larger stoneware work is that I am used to the bright clarity of my glazes over porcelain. The barnacle section of this vase has been covered with a thin layer of porecelain slip but it is not enough to keep some of the rust colours coming through from the iron in the clay. So it is back to testing to getting the glaze effects I want. Oh well, that is in fact part of what keeps me moving forward. I like the challenge.


I like the form of it though. And it has given some ideas where to go with this work. It's not headed for the scrap pile.

This pendant has been glazed in one of 3 new tests I had put into my last firing. I feel a small obsession coming on. I love how the raised portions of the pattern are greenish and the deeper parts are a mottled blue. It would be perfect for the barnacle pot. Unfortunatly it doesn't do the same thing on that clay.

I've been feeling prop challenged lately. Or maybe just bored with photographing my work in a consistent way. The pile of shells in the last photo were gathered on many beach walking expeditions. I found them back on another of my rumaging expeditions in what should have been a clean up exercise.

The little bit of shell in the first photo is from my Gramma. It was part of my inheritance when she died many years ago. She did not have much but she did have this wonderful memento of her only visit to California to spend time with my Auntie. I don't quite know how I ended up with it. We are more than two dozen grandchildren and I feel like I got the best thing of all. Some day I'll show you a photo of the whole shell. It is very beautiful.

Warm regards, LeAnn