A true masterpiece!

This was the last and best thing I made for my class. I used up a little bit of my leftover clay and shaped this by hand. At the end of my first class, Andrew said I should make a little hand giving the finger to hold my rings and I filed that idea away for later use.

It took a really long time to get fired and I was afraid someone stole it, but luckily that was untrue! The glaze is red clay and mossy green colors and looks awesome.

A true masterpiece! The pinnacle of my oeuvre! The greatest thing ever made from clay!! :)

Bowls galore!

I made nine bowls in my pottery class. They are easy to make and fun! The first five are all glazed differently, with the assistance of Andrew. 

 The bowl on the left is kind of a green and purple mix. The one on the right had pink slip on the inside, so I glazed it in white hoping for some contrast. Instead it is just ugly, which is sad; that was the bowl with the nicest shape and thinness.

 This one has a scalloped rim and is a variety of purple hues. It was supposed to be a larger bowl, but I pinched it too thin and the rim started to droop, so I went with the flow.

 The blue tones bowl is a nice size and the sea green one gets narrower at the base.

 These were glazed to be a matching, but not identical, set. There were five, but one of them disappeared.

 They were dipped half and half in blue and then green, with a stripe of overlap down the center. We did them all in the same order, so it's really interesting how the center stripe is different on two!

One more post about ceramic stuff and then on to my sewing projects! I have some new stuff in the works and I'll post it before we leave for Europe next Sunday!

Ceramics: Mugs and various "art" pieces

I took some pictures a while ago indoors, but the light just did not show off the glaze. Now my class was ten weeks long, but all of these were glazed after the class had officially ended. Five weeks later, I have all of my work glazed and home. 

Andrew was my glaze assistant; not only did it speed up the whole process, he has a really good eye for glaze combos that I would have never noticed. he also can spot the stuff on the out-of-kiln shelves so fast after just seeing my terrible sketches. 

These are my mugs and random things, all of my bowls will be in a later post. Andrew chose the glazes for the most interesting ones, 2, 3 and 4. 

 These were my set of "beer steins" but they are far too small! 2 and 3 are normal sized mugs, but very heavy. The "shot mug" was glazed in winter blue, which turned out super ugly! That was my genius choice. I was also practicing making and attaching handles.

 A vase and a wonky mug. The mug doesn't look too bad in this picture. The back lip is about 1/2 inch higher. I had planned to put the handle on so that the higher side is where you would sip, but then I forgot and put the handle on the other side. So that only works if you drink with your left hand. Andrew chose the vase's glaze and it turned out pretty cool!

 These were a cylinder and bowl that I screw up the rim and became very uneven and thin in places. Scallops are the best fix for that! There were always a lot of scalloped pieces pm the racks of glazed work, and not just mine! The blue I named "La Bombe" because it reminds me of a grenade, though it is technically a vase... The bowl I glazed in my favorite Temoku so it looks black and copper. I am going to keep it by my bed for bobby pins and earrings and such.

 And there's all of them from the top!

I think I made a lot of progress in this class! I would not say I am "good" at wheelthrowing yet, but some of my things were actually looking like THINGS by the end of class! :()

So many cylinders!

I picture Sean Connery saying that in my head: shoooo many shillindersh! That's how you should read it too.

My ceramics class is over, but I am still fetching things back from their final firings. These are from the third, fourth and fifth weeks of class where we started trying to shape cylinders into mugs, vases, etc instead of just tiny flowerpots.

 They are all different, but making ten of them gave me a lot of practice shaping cylinders!Some are like small vases, some like jars, one looks like a pitcher w/o a handle and one is just a regular cylinder.

 That is not to say they are flawless, oh noo. They are weird and uneven and thick in some spots and thin in others. It was good practice! For trimming them too and practicing bases and feet.

I tried out a bunch of glazes and glaze combos to see what I like and what I don't. If we look at them like pool balls: 1- purple, 2- antique white, 3 and 9- temoku which looks like black and copper, 4 and 7- josh green, 5 and 10- yellow salt, 6- apple green, 8- antique white with purple on the inside. I would say 1 and 8 look gross, due to the purple, and the rest are interesting. 

I gave my brother the shorter black one (3) since he liked it and a few to Steven, Stephanie's husband, who made the mistake of being interested in my pottery haha. I also gave away my first four cylinders that I put plants in to the secretaries at school. This is good; I do not need to hoard every piece of pottery I make!!

I'm going to pick up more tomorrow, so brace yourselves for some bowls and mugs!

More Molly-made pottery

After my five week class ended, I signed up for the ten week class. It's a lot of fun and slowly my projects have been getting much better. First, they had us make cylinders to practice pulling shapes and then shaping cylinders into vases and things.

I have made a ton of things, but these are the only four finished objects I have now. four cylinders that I decided should be small flowerpots. They still aren't perfect, but they are much better than anything  I made in the first class!!!

After bisque firing

Glazed and finished: spodumene, iron red, josh blue and celadon green.

I planted my tiny seedlings in them with a layer of rocks in the bottom for drainage. Lavender and three mints. 

 For scale, the biggest one (blue) is about five inches tall. I have ten more vases and things that are being glaze-fired right now and i'll post about them soon. This class has been taking up most of my free time that I usually sew during. The class is three hours on Wednesday nights, but then I go in after school another day or two to trim, glaze or throw more pots.

The weather is getting nicer ad that makes me want to sew summer clothes, plus there's only three weeks left of my class so expect more sewing soon!

Pottery Class II: My Wonky Bowls

I took a five week class at Lillstreet, which is conveniently close-by. It was really fun trying (and failing) to make things on the wheel! I am going to take a ten week class starting in two weeks, and this time I won't be stressed with wedding stuff. Hopefully, I will have lots of time to go into the studio and practice outside of class (you get open studio time with your class fee!). 

Here are the other lopsided things I made, but on to my bowls! The pictures do not show them to scale, as the largest is maybe 5 inches in diameter. They are less than functional for eating, unless you want a tiny bowl of peanuts, or maybe 5 chips...

 My final two glazed in teal.

Haven't mastered a smooth inside...

The side view shows their non-symmetry.

 The black one was my first, the blue my second and the yellow my third.

 By #2, I learned to level the top and by #3 I was able to make it slightly thinner. They are still absurdly thick though.

 I gave the others away to Andrew and Luke to use for change and stuff, but I kept my yellow salt glazed one. Now I keep my pins in it!

I like how the stoneware shows through a little and makes it look "antiquey."

Anyways, just wanted to share and hopefully I will come out of my next class with some awesome stuff. Ironically, we now have matching dishes for the first time ever (from wedding presents), but T-Rex could use some fancy bowls and Andrew said I should make a tiny hand giving the finger to store my rings on at night. Lol.

Pottery Class- Part I

My five week pottery class learning to use the wheel is now over. I plan on taking the 10 week beginner class in the spring, which starts after the wedding. Then I will have the free time to go in outside of class and practice. 

I took ceramics my senior year of high school and loved it and again my senior year of college. Those classes were all hand-building projects and I have never before tried to use the wheel. I made a variety of hideous and misshapen items to share with y'all!

Mine, Andrew's, Luke's

 We were trying to make cylinders, which then becomes mugs. Mine are all about the size of 2 shot glasses, so I didn't even put handles on them. The glazing turned out really cool and like I expected: light teal with brown over the top.

 We learned how to shape the base on these when the clay is leather hard. I did manage to put a rim on one. (far left). Andrew is taking his to work to use for espresso, I don't know what to do with the other two. Besides giant shots, obvi.

Our last project was to handbuild trays to use up the rest of our clay. However, "trays" was a project in my college ceramics class and I have five, I repeat five, useless trays around the house. I might post about them, just you you don't think I am horrible at clay.

Point being, I made coasters instead because I didn't have much clay left. I used a roller to give it a "wood" texture. I thought the glaze combination was going to be different and they ended up looking like tiny Earths. That's cool.

 However, the bowed up in the kiln and are also very smooth, so glasses kind of want to slip off of them. Lol. The BEST coasters!

I also made five bowls, but I am waiting on two to be glaze fired. I'll post the bowls later.

PS, you can see my wedding skirt and a bunch of wedding loot in the background!