Our first challenge in our LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class Wednesday night was to throw a “perfect” hollow sphere on the wheel. Thirty minutes and two pounds of clay… plenty of time, plenty of clay… but many of them had NEVER thrown a sphere before… let alone even a closed form!

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After last week’s POTTERY THROWDOWN class where they decorated tiles and a cylinder using that one tool… their “homework” was to throw another cylinder at least 9-inches tall… and then decorate that new one with that same one tool. Looking to see how the design transformed from the two-dimensional tile, to a smaller cylinder… and then even larger where there was even more “canvas” to decorate. This time, they had to use THAT ONE TOOL as their primary decorating tool, but they could also embellish with other surface decoration techniques as well.

Unfortunately… Teresa, Jon & Patti missed the class the week before…
so they didn’t have a tile or a cylinder to work from.
All they had was their homework assignment… and ONE TOOL.

Teresa

Jon

Patti

And now back to the original challenge… with tiles, cylinders and their new vases!

Susan

Jacob

Taylor

Tatiana

Claire

Dave

Molly

And now our TOP TWO WINNERS…

Ryan who carved out all of the areas with the dull metal part that was inside his tool.. and then applied each cut-out to the vase to make it even more dimensional.

Donna who started with a simple heart design on her nine tiles, then extrapolated one tile of the heart into the five dots and one hexagon for the cylinder… and then came back and combined them all back together for her heart-themed vase… still with the dots and hexagons!

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To kick-off our party last Wednesday night, my students took on the “FACE THE COOKIE” Challenge from Minute-To-Win-It. Basically, you put a cookie on your forehead… and then slowly move the cookie down with just facial muscles & expressions… until you get the cookie in your mouth! So I made a challenge… succeed with the cookie in the mouth in one minute and they would get an additional “five minute advantage” in one of the two challenges in class that night.

Crazy fun for everyone… perhaps too much fun… as we got shooshed a bit…
and told to keep it down. How dare we have too much fun in class?!!!

And yes… they “forced” me to give it a try too… harder than it looks…
but the REWARD of success is pretty darn sweet!

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MARCH 6th – NATIONAL OREO COOKIE DAY!!!

It would be wrong to NOT celebrate a national holiday, right!?
Well we would never dare…

Instead, we celebrated National Oreo Cookie Day with LOTS of them in class
last Wednesday night! Two of my students brought a whole selection of cookies…
and I brought the milk!!!

And to top it all off, we also had “OREOs” from Cuba!
Patti & Jon were there for a biking vacation, and they brought back treats for me….
the closest thing they could find to OREO’s while in Cuba!

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MORE EXCITING NEWS… I just saw that two of my students did a little shopping
on their way into my pottery class tonight. Looks like a party in the making…
we’ll just change the name of our class to the OREO THROWDOWN!!!

Looks like we’re off to a great start in celebrating NATIONAL OREO COOKIE DAY!!!

Best reason to celebrate if I ever saw one!!!
And yes, this is legit… March 6th every year is NATIONAL OREO COOKIE DAY!!!

Stamped & ready to start trimming…
and then ready for adding some colored flashing slip accents
on the ones that will be soda-fired.

No time to rest… while making more spoon rests!

You know how I LOVE trimming…
and even more so with a nice sharp Bison Trimming Tool…
and clay at just the right stage of leatherhard
so you get nice smooth ribbons of clay coming right off!