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Hand Building Project: Lace Imprint Casserole
One of the simplest and most rewarding clay pieces I make is a lace imprint casserole dish. This particular piece is eventually headed to my brother. Steps to creating a lace imprint casserole dish: I took a Pyrex style glass casserole dish and created a plaster mold from it. Be prepared that due to shrinking in the kiln, the piece you end up creating from a plaster mold will be smaller than the original piece it is cast from. I rolled out a slab of clay with a rolling pin, then draped the clay over the mold and used a combination of patting with my hand and stroking…
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Grow Your Own Plants for Clay Imprints
In this post I’m going to share some of my favorite plants to use with clay — all of which grow well in my home garden, which is zone 7b and follow up with tips for making imprints with leaves. This blog space may come off as being scattered across multiple hobbies and interests, but it’s an accurate reflection of my life. My day to day time is split up between family and home routines, teaching online graduate classes in engineering, home gardening and making pottery. Those last two are hobbies that have begun a gradual marriage. I make planters for small jades, succulents and indoor mini-gardens, and I grow…
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First attempt at pour bowls
I love being asked, “Do you make…”, because chances are good that I don’t, but am about to have fun trying something new. I also appreciate being able to post a question like “Do pour bowls need handles?” on Facebook and get an answer with in a few minutes. This was my first(ish) attempt at pour bowls, and I like the way they turned out. I made one many years ago that was completely ugly and now holds odd bits in the garage. The layered look of the green bowl was created with a black glaze and Millicent’s Curtains. These weren’t intended to be stacking, but the small foot on…
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Hand Building Projects
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How to glaze the whole ceramic spoon
There’s one question I keep getting via Etsy, on this blog and through email. “How do you glaze your ceramic spoons and keep them from sticking to the kiln shelf?” Clearly, there is a lot of interest in handmade spoons! So how do you glaze the entire ceramic spoon? I use kiln stilts! Kiln stilts consist of metal rods that prop up a piece off the shelf, and a durable one may be used multiple times. I purchased Roselli stilts from Big Ceramic Store. According to Big Ceramic Store, beyond cone 6, metal rods may begin to deform, and may deform at lower temperatures under…
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Pulling Spoons
A while back I shared how I made spoons from a mold. I still have the plaster molds, but after awhile, I found them to be clumsy and frustrating. I’m not patient enough to wait for the mold to release the wet clay. So over the past few days being cooped up inside do to nasty weather, I’ve started back at spoon making without the molds. Instead of pressing clay into a mold, I roll a wedge-shaped coil, press the thicker end around the bowl of an existing spoon and pull the handle. My process is changing and evolving, but these are my basic steps for pulling ceramic spoons. …
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In Progress
This time last year, I completely set aside making ceramics, but this semester with both boys in elementary school and not having to essentially spend the day carpool hopping, the days are much more flexible and I can get dirty, make some things and have time to clean up after myself. The past few weeks I’ve been revisiting items I haven’t made in awhile: cake plates, utensil holders and spoons. Here are a few pictures of greenware. I have a bad habit of not cleaning the garage studio until I change clay bodies, which is absolutely necessary when switching between a white clay and a brown clay. I suspect that…
