These are the second of the set of charms I made out of Bridget Harpers glass-like porcelain.  We found that using fusing paper underneath kept them from sticking to the shelf, so that saved some time and effort. They still  need to be sanded. Since I hate sanding, that’s the main thing holding me back from making them useable.

My friend and pottery mentor Bridget Harper made this special porcelain that vitrifies at a low temperature.  She warned me that it wasn’t easy to work with, but I was able to roll out thin sheets by using a pasta machine.  I stamped these with commercial rubber stamps, then trimmed them to 1″ square.  They feel and sound like glass, and need to be sanded before they’re wearable, but I think they’ll make nice jewelry.

I think the crucial flaw in this bowl was the temperature at which I glazed it.  It was in the upper hundreds on glazing day, and the pieces absorbed thick layers of glaze.  I tried to feather some of it off by rubbing it with my finger once it was dry, but it wasn’t enough.  Now I have a broken bowl that doesn’t look that nice. It still holds water, so I will keep it and try to think of an outside use for it.

This is a second set of oak leaf pendants I made, using a different sprig mold.  I didn’t clean them up well, figuring that I could do it once they were bisqued, but that’s turning out to be not feasible.  I can’t stand the sound of dry sanding, and I’d rather make all new ones and clean them up while wet than try to salvage these.  I might use them for something else.

For ten years, I wore a carved oak leaf made out of antler as a pendant around my neck. I wore through at least one cord, and eventually the pendant itself wore through. I was heartbroken.  I loved that pendant, but my attempts to fix it proved insufficient.

I decided to make a new pendant out of porcelain.  I started by making mock-ups of what I wanted it to look like out of  polymer clay.  Once they were baked, I painted it with mold-release soap, let it dry, and then made a sprig mold with pottery plaster.  The hardest part was cleaning up the leaves after they came out of the mold. The mold didn’t preserve the deeply lobed shape of the leaves, and I had to carve new ones with an exacto knife.  The leaves themselves were extremely fragile.  I made twelve leaves, and only four survived the final firing.  One of them was this rod’s bod clay, which got into my porcelain bucket by mistake.

I’m wearing one of these pendants right now, but I’ve already started to make new ones, as this is about 4 millimeters longer than I wanted it to be.