I took a beadmaking class in December, and got my beads back recently.  We were working on stringer techniques, so I tried to use the same simple techniques with the same colors figuring that it was A. good practice and B. might make enough beads for a piece of jewelry. I rarely string my beads, as I don’t care for that sort of jewelry.

This is a piece I did in high school.  It’s raku fired, which accounts for the carbon trappings.  The piece is merely a cylinder of clay, altered to make it interesting, with a loop like a handle on top.  I really love this piece, and tried to duplicate it in 2003 without much success.  I decided to photograph this because I was experimenting with lighting techniques and needed a subject.

This is the largest of all six of this series, and can hold maybe sixteen ounces.  It has a couple dots of blue glaze that got on there by mistake, but it’s still one of my favorite drinking vessels now.

For the second set of weed cups, I first tried to scratch in the design and then fill it with white slip, using a metal rib tool to scrape it off. That didn’t work at all. My fellow ceramicists suggested that perhaps I had done it with the clay too wet (It was leather hard when I put the slip in, and leather hard still when I scraped it off).  So I sanded off my messed up design and tried again, this time putting the white slip over the entire surface.  While it was still leather-hard, I scratched the design into it.  Since I’d already done it several times by this point, I barely needed the photo as a reference.

Another smiley-ball filler piece until I get a chance to finish my new books and photograph them.