turquoise!

i adore this new glaze. 

i forget the real name, but it is turquoise wonderful to me .... and did well highlighting the textures i love so much .... i have a quartish jar of it and had to brush on three coats, front and back .... so i need to sort out if i can buy it by the gallon .... or the five gallon ... or whatever amount those massive buckets of glaze are.... so here are three platters in new turquoise.

red! with specks!

hey!

red glaze!! with specks.

it is a crystalline glaze. while i was glazing them, andy saw them and said, what are all those chunks? .... and those were the crystals .... that then awesomely melt into the glaze .... 

i think this looks awesome on the bowls (they are small, see last post) ..... but not as super on the textured plates. it's not terrible on the texture, but i think the crystals obscure some of the texture .... 

still learning. i like that.

happy bowls ....

i pulled four happy bowls out of the kiln this morning .... 

so on my kiln/glazing learning curve, i've at least found an excellent clear glaze that i love..... 

on the wheel throwing learning curve, i'm still WAY at the beginning. but happy here. i'm just practicing small to improve my technique. i can throw bigger, but they aren't as technically proficient ... so i'm upping my proficiency small this week ..... 

i'll probably make big here and there cause its fun, but in my head, i'm going for higher quality (of which these are fine but not FINE)

ioh

 interfaith outreach house .... its transitional housing for folks who need a hand up .... help making it from homelessness, or near homelessness .... its a two year living arrangement in safe apartments where the family commits to working, saving, life skill classes and much more ... my women's group at church helped in the turnover of one of these apartments this go round ... a family graduated and moved on .... and my pals reset the apartment with bedding and kitchen gear and the whole shebang you'd need if you were moving your family into a new apartment ..... and .... i made this painting for the wall ... mixed media acrylic collage ....

this is the back of the painting .... likely the new owner of the painting won't know what the back of the painting says until she moves into her new home in two years.

8 balls of clay

i'm not an excellent potter on the wheel .... i've done it sporadically in my life .... and was pretty good .....and now i'm trying to get back to pretty good .... 

so, no surprise that i'm having trouble .... but the funny thing is, most of my trouble is gravity ... hence, this bowl, drying upside down so that its rim doesn't flip down .... not sure it'll make it to someone's kitchen, but, i'm trying! 

 i made 8 balls of clay ... each a pound and a half ..... five were decent bowls, one was a half sized bowl cause i wrecked it, trimmed it, and saved it... one was that upside down one above .... and one was a pile of mush that's now been seasoned with a few curse words .... i didn't feel the curse words really, they just slipped out.