Carving and glazes

Carved another jug today! I like this one pretty well, it was a little bit taller than I like, but I think the design fits the shape.  It was a pain in the butt carving the area under the handle.  B-mix is so smooth, but it is annoyingly softe even when its leather hard. It's far too easy to smear stuff or dent it.

Also I finally took some pictures of the test cups I tried out Ryans glazes on.  Most of them are not great, but I will figure something out.  The one on the left is just bare clay, I like it when it is more brown, but when it gets a lot of salt it turns blue, which I am not so sure about.  The on on the right has Ryans signature glaze, which I actually like, especially when it turns black.  It makes a nice contrast for the raised carvings, but I'm not sure it would work on the carvings I'm doing now.

None of these were that great, though the blue one was alright.

bmix jug 2

Carved another of the jugs today!  This one started out with the same pattern as one of the stoneware jugs, with just the leaf-shapes cut out, but I still thought the spaces between them were too big. Since I am too lazy to actually try and calculate what size the shapes would have to be to end up almost touching, I just added more shapes in-between! I am pretty happy with the way it turned out, I like it a lot better than the stoneware one.




And just as an extra, the adorable picture of my cats that ended up as the carving on those mugs that I hate.  But the picture is great.  I love my kitties.  This blog is going to end up being half pots, and half animals. :D

B-mix jug

This is the first of the b-mix jugs I've carved. I forgot how soft it is to work with!! Very nice and easy to carve, almost too easy as sometimes the tool slips farther than I want it to go :P  Here you can see it in progress, first I lightly draw the outlines (which you can't really see), then one by one I carve the outside lines with my triangular tool, and then carve out the middle with the flat one.

Here is the finished piece! I think this design with the vertical lines is my favorite so far, though I will still work on other designs.  Sam is apparently very interested in my pottery.

Sam is investigating my home studio, aka the dining room table.

Carved Jugs

I got my business cards today!  I dont have any specific purpose for them, other than I want something to put with my pots if I sell any of them, but its very exciting :)  I got them from vistaprint.com, and it was only $15 (with shipping) for 250!  Pretty good deal :D

I got some more carving done today! I've started taking stuff home to carve, half so I don't have to drive to the studio, half so I don't have to do more work for Ryan! :P  This is one of my favorites so far, but overall I am really happy with the way the carvings are turning out.

For all of the jugs so far I have been cutting out the shapes in paper, then outlining them on the pot and then carving it out.  I like this one a lot, though I'm not really sure what the lugs are for. I don't think they would hold its weight

Getting ready to fire

I've started carving on the jugs, and I am pretty happy with the way they are turning out.  I really love the contrast in textures between the smooth surfaces and the carved.

Lorraine let me take a picture of her since I was holding a treat, normally she runs away when I hold my phone out. She is a complete sweetheart, but very shy.

These are some of Ryans pieces that went into the firing today. I got to sand all of the tumblers and then wipe them down :) The big barrel thing had too much glaze on it, so I got to wipe it all off; super fun :P

Here is the kiln mostly loaded up. I got a few cups in, mostly just to test out Ryans glazes on my carvings. They are all stoneware though, so I will need to throw some b-mix tests too.