The sun is shining again… the ice is melting again… and inside I’m ice-dyeing more t-shirts AGAIN! More colorful “magic” happening while the ice melts and the colors seep into the shirts!

Once I had finished my class demos with marbled clay, my students got all colorful and started throwing their own marbled pieces! So much fun… as it’s kinda magical when the colors appear!!!

Just for fun, I followed up the first marbled clay demo with a simple two-color piece. Kinda looks right for the season… as the color reminded me of a yummy Shamrock Shake!!!

This week in my Beginning Wheel class we played with colored clay for “marbled” pots! I started by coloring some clay ahead of time for them with mason stains layered & wedged into B-Clay. We then layered regular B-Clay and/or Brown Stoneware with the colored clays… and then gave it two simple wedges to start the marbling. So much fun to see the colors presenting themselves as you’re throwing. When we were done, the pieces still have a “smudgy” layer of mixed clays like a dirty skin on the pot. When they get to leatherhard, we will carefully trim the entire surface off to reveal the clean lines of layered & marbled clays.

And yes, if we were doing more than one or two pots, I would have definitely used rubber gloves. But since this was a “quickie” demo and not a long-term pottery career of marbled clay… I figured it was tough enough for my students to throw their own forms, let alone to do it with gloves on!

So we did the same crackled slip demo in class… this time using the same black slip with sodium silicate over my newly green-colored porcelain. Not quite sure how I feel about this one. Kinda channeling Elphaba or some swamp creature… but who knows… we might still learn to love this, right?!

After playing with black slip on white porcelain, we started wondering how we could add more color to it. So we decided to try using some colored clay under the crackled black slip!!! And I started making a batch of GREEN PORCELAIN!!! Not really sure if the green mason stain would stain my hands or not… but I was willing to take one for the team!!!

And or the record… my hands are no longer green!

And the quest continues… my friend & master tile-maker Mike Skiersch fired some more cone six test tiles in his kiln for me. There were a few “duds”… but for the most part VERY encouraged by some of these new colors & combinations. I’m always looking for good glazes that pool & break in all the right places to accentuate the stamped patterns… and not cover them up!!! I think we’re onto something here…

So then THIS happened last night in class!!!

And no… Dexter is NOT In my class!!!

It was just Kelly trying to dye her clay red with some “strawberry red” inclusion stain. She started with gloves but found it easier to wedge it in with bare hands. She’s still planning on adding more pigment to make it even more RED!!! Kinda wondering how long her fingertips will stay that “bloody” red color???

Plus another handful of beach glass found along the lake this morning. It started as my “quarantine collection” when the pandemic first started and we were all “searching” for new things to do. And if this thing carries on much longer… my collection will soon be overflowing!!!

So here they are… a couple of my new ice-dyed shirts. Some of the colors have blended more, the white areas “stained” a bit. But they’re still pretty groovy… and ready for a new session of pottery classes at Lillstreet starting on Monday.