I made this at a special workshop taught at the Mesa Arts Center by Laurie Nessel.  Now I’ve made vessels with both lampworking and borosilicate techniques, as well as in the hot shop.  In some ways, this is the easiest, but it is by no means the fastest.  Also, unlike with boro and hot shop, you can’t easily get perfectly translucent vessels on account of the roughness of the core.  You can, however, get details and bright colors.

This is the second of the Butterfly tiles. I used a photograph of an American Painted Lady as a reference. I learned from my faerie dolls that butterfly wings done from memory don’t usually look good, unless the artist is also a student of butterflies.

On this one I used the Duncan “French Impressions” glaze/paste underneath the low fired glazes.

I bought some glaze/paste called “French Impressions” by Duncan that I hoped would create the same effect as the tinted slip trail, yet not have to be done at the greenware stage.  The bottle said nothing about whether it had to be done under or over the glaze, so I tried it both ways. Equal success.

This one has the “French Impressions” impasto/glaze stuff over the low fired glaze.

Finally got my kiln working, and was able to glaze some of the tiles I’d made last year (or was it two years ago?)  I had the idea of basing some tiles off of the Tarot, because Tarot cards are defined enough to provide concrete parameters, yet still have room for personal interpretation.  I doubt I will do the entire deck.

To make this design, I used B-mix clay and a slab roller. Then I tinted some b-mix slip with black stain and used a jacquard bottle to trail the lines.  It is neither easy nor the best technique.