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Making Ceramic Ornaments with Cookie Cutters
For several years now, we have made Christmas ornaments from clay. Last weekend I brought my supplies into the kitchen to finish up a couple requests from friends, and my kids descended on the makeshift workspace and demanded clay and all my tools. After a morning of wresting on the living room floor and failed attempts at controlling the noise level in the house, the silence that their focus on the clay brought was amusing, even if it took me five times longer than if should have to roll out a couple Texas ornaments. Basically anyone who has access to clay and a kiln could make charming ornaments with relatively little experience. Several things that…
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Making a Bead Tree for the Kiln Part Two
I posted “Making a Bead Tree for the Kiln” back in March. It worked pretty wonderfully until my three year old broke it, twice over, by knocking it off the table and onto the garage floor. It is still usable, but with that long span between the remaining supports, the nichrome wire tends to sag. I decided to build a new one, and it’s currently waiting to be fired. One of the troubles with the last design was that it required loading many pendants along two pieces of wire, then having to space them out evenly between supports. The new design calls for four wire segments with just a little less space…
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Throwing Ruffle-edged Cake Stands
I’ve been on a quest to develop a simple, elegant process for throwing cake stands on the pottery wheel. They are not difficult to throw as one piece, but I was encountering several problems as they dried. First, the edge was curling up, meaning when the plate was turned right-side-up, the top slightly slumped boding immanent disaster for buckeye balls or round fruit. The other issue was that the compression under the cylinder was slightly different, leading to a ring or two rather than a smooth surface. I was able to correct the slumping by righting the plate while still somewhat still wet, securing the base and attempting to throw…
