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Handbuilding in the Kitchen
With only two or so weeks until Christmas, I wanted to get in one more batch of pottery for the year. Since the pottery wheel is currently covered in Speckled Brownstone clay, and all I have left to use is Little Loafers, which is a white clay, I’ve moved back to handbuilding inside. I know I could just clean the studio, but baby, it’s cold outside! After glazing 75 ornaments in the last batch, I wanted quick, less tedious work…
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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…
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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…
