I think this is the least impressive of the three rocks, but it does complete the set. Like the other two rocks, it sits flat, which is a nice bonus for if I want to put flowers or candles in them. I have not yet used them. Like many of the things I create, I may end up hanging on to it until it no longer feels “new” and then giving it away to a friend.

This is the second fake rock I did. I wanted the three of them to be as different from one another as possible, except for the glaze color and the concept. I started, again, by smashing the clay against a tree to give it texture, and then I put it on the wheel to carve out the smooth divot. When it had dried somewhat, I cut open a flap and hollowed it out, then closed it up again so you couldn’t tell. It’s still pretty heavy, but it’s not solid.

For the glaze, I used simple red iron oxide, which I painted all over and wiped off in places. The divot is a clear high fired glaze. I made these as candleholders, but I think that if you had a tiny spiked frog, you could use this for a pretty kick-ass ikeabana. Except that I don’t really like ikebana. But maybe someone could.

I had a bunch of clay and wanted to make something easy, so I decided to make fake rocks. I started by thumping the lump of clay against a tree in a random pattern. After that, I put it on the wheel and carved out a little hole. I thought if I let it dry really, really slowly, I could fire it solid, but Bridget disagreed, so I ended up hollowing it out by cutting a flap and bending it back. You can sort of see the lines where I cut it, but only if you know where to look. Underneath, it looks like there ought to be a flap to hide a key, except that there isn’t.

I’ve had this terra cotta pot under my studio table for just about a year, waiting for the project I wanted to do with it.  Finally, I decided that I needed a pot for some succulents, so now was the time.

I started by coming up with a short phrase to put around the lip. This is really hard for me, despite being a writer, because nothing seems good enough to immortalize in ceramic.  The phrase reads “Let the sun shine, the Earth bursts forth with life!”  I got the letter spacing better this time, because I drew out the length of the circumference of the pot lid on scrap newsprint, and therefore had a rough estimate of the space requirements for each word. I used the french liner raised slip to outline each letter and then began to apply the low fire glaze.

Why do I always forget how *($^%# time consuming those %^$#$%! low fired glazes are?  It probably took me four hours just to glaze the rim, and it’s not even as even as I wanted it.  At least listening to “This American Life” while I paint makes the time pass swiftly.

After I fired the pot, I started to design the tile mosiac.  I used a stencil of art deco  flower designs from a book I’ve had forever and enlarged it for the flower design.  I cut the petals out of clear glass and used acrylic medium to paste some really cool art paper onto the back. After the acrylic dried, I applied more on the back. Then I cut out around the glass with a razor blade.

I laid the flowers down on my sketch of the surface area, and went through the stained glass I had to decide on colors. I have a nice collection of stained glass, but becuase I got them in a bulk purchase from a non-standard location, they’re all opaque hand-made art glass. Ridiculously expensive when you buy it most of the time, but I got an incredible discount. Ironically, I don’t like it much. I prefer cathedral glass.  Still, the blue was nice, and I had several different colors of it that resembled one another, so I cut out chunks. The chunks are about half an inch square.  I cut the stems out of a light green glass.  When I was done, I realized that I needed more to fill the middle area, so I cut out the leaves from dark green glass.

For the bottom, I went through the tiles I’d made earlier. You can see some of them on this site.  I wanted to use the leaf tiles on the flower stems, but they didn’t look right. I have a lot of the circle tiles, not because they work well in the design (I think they’re hard to use) but because they’re easy to make.  I think that looked okay.

I probably spent about eight to ten hours on this project, including mastic and grouting. (It took at least an hour just to clean the grout off the tiles.)  Am I happy with it? No.  It doesn’t look as colorful as I wanted it to.  I think that black grout would have helped. I should have used an opaque glaze on the rim.  The blue squares are too big, and I couldn’t fit them as tightly as I wanted to.  Also, the succulents I bought are in tiny containers, so I put a different plant (a piece of columnular cactus) in there instead.

Still, it holds a plant, so it’s not a complete loss.

This looks a lot like a smiley ball without a face, doesn’t it?  I wanted to do something as close to a sphere as I could manage, just because it’s pretty easy and it’s sometimes nice to have a heavy ball to roll around in your hands. I coated it with red iron oxide (as I did for the freaky rabbit sculpture) too.

In the pottery studio, there used to be a postcard with a photo of this really cool freaky hare sculpture.  Naturally, when I went looking for it to use as a reference, it had mysteriously vanished.  I did this anyway, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I wanted that weird blobby texture (and I think I got it) and I wanted it to look a little like the rabbit would happily devour your brains if it could. As a bonus, it even stands up, and it didn’t crack. I call this a win.

I didn’t feel much like throwing this class session, so I decided to try some alternative pottery ideas. This is one of them. My friend had some plastic embossing strips for ceramic artists, and she used them to make a cool mug. I made this mug, which didn’t turn out quite as cool because there was some separation at the bottom and now it won’t hold water.  So now it’s a pen holder.

After I stamped the image, the second step was to cut them out and lay them gently into styrofoam meat trays.  I pushed the clay into the corner to get a neat shape, and then trimmed the edges.  I’ve done a lot of these. It’s not as easy as it looks.  The less you touch the clay, the better it looks.

I’ve resisted using rubber stamps in my pottery before, preferring the ones I’ve made myself out of bisqued clay, but I shouldn’t have. Rubber stamps are available in so many different designs, and there are things you can do with stamps that you can’t do with any other tool.