As Part Two to Tuesday night’s glazing demo… I challenged my students to glaze sixty cylinders in all different glaze combinations & techniques. They’re always talking about how they get overwhelmed when glazing, that each pot is too “precious” to experiment, and that they don’t see enough finished results to really make an informed decision. I’m taking all of that out of the way and I provided them with sixty bisqued cylinders to glaze… none of them “precious”!

We’re looking forward to seeing the results and comparing them to the notes we took for each one! Even if half of them turn out as a good combo I’ll be excited. They all embraced the challenge as they dipped, double-dipped, bubbled, splattered and glazed all of the cylinders. We’ll see soon enough how they all turn out!

This week in my pottery class, we tackled some of the more “advanced” glazing options…
layered combos, stains, oxides, wax resist decoration, wood ash, etc.
But the big hit of the demo was BUBBLE GLAZING!!!

Always a hit… as you add a bit of dishwashing soap to a small cup of glaze and then blow bubbles onto your pot. When the bubbles pop, you get a great “textured” bubble pattern of glaze contrast. We tried both glaze bubbles, and a green stain bubbling. We’ll see what happens!!!

It’s going to be a BIG glazing “demo” tonight in my beginner’s wheelthrowing class…
let’s hope they’re all up for some interactive glazing fun!!!

Save

Several people asked to see the finished pieces from my bubble glazing demo a week or so ago. Well here are a few of the pieces from class. A fun technique with a wide range of results… have fun, experiment & bubble away!!!!

This was my demo piece. A base layer of a glossy white glaze. Followed by a bubble layer of a purple glaze… and then another bubble layer of blue. Apparently the purple wasn’t quite strong enough to show up? Bad glaze choice?… or just not enough bubbles???

And then here are a few pots bubbled by the students!

My studio cart down in the kiln room ready for loading. The bands of masking tape are just “safety belts” so everything survives the trip down in the freight elevator. WHEW… made it. Including the teapots glazed & wadded… wouldn’t want to lose another one of them!!!

My first batch of holiday ornaments are ready to go into the soda kiln as well.

Another table full of bisqued pots for last night’s marathon glazing session. Either way you look at it… there’s a LOT of pots waiting to go into this weekend’s soda kiln. Happy to report… these are all glazed, wadded and ready to go. For tonight I load the kiln!

It was a big night of glazing last night. A lot of bisqued pots needing to be glazed for this weekend’s soda kiln firing. I start by adding some tenmoku glaze accents as inlays in the stamped patterns. When it dries, I carefully wipe off the top surface to keep the glaze only in the stamped recesses. Lots of glazing… lots of wiping. And that’s just for starters!

Last night I taught another beginning wheelthrowing class as a sub for Jayson. He had requested two things… stamping and bubble glazing demos for his students. DONE! Sure, the stamping is the easy one… but the bubbles are more FUN FOR EVERYONE!!!

So we started with a base coat of a single glaze. For my bowl, I went with a shiny white glaze for a good clean bottom layer. Thinking it would be a good clean canvas for the colored bubbles on top.

Once that base layer was dry, I cleaned off the bottom and prepared the bubbles. So we took a small disposable plastic cup, and filled it with maybe a 1/4″ of glaze. I let the student choose, so my bubbles were a shiny purple colored glaze. We added a few drops of DAWN dishwashing liquid and a straw. Stir it up and start to blow some bubbles… like you’re six again! Just don’t inhale!!!

As the bubbles start to accumulate and fill the cup, get ready to “spill” them onto your pre-glazed piece. As the cup overflows with bubbles, just let them gather on the sies of you rpot. We were using a banding wheel so we could easily rotate the pot to get the bubbles all over. A slower steady blowing into the straw seems to get larger bubbles. Forceful fast blowing seems to create smaller bubbly foam.

Once you’ve covered your pot with bubbles, just sit back and watch the magic happen. The bubbles start to pop all by themselves leaving thsi really great pattern of glaze “residue” behind. Leave it as it is… or add more bubbles if you want?!

We decided to go one step further… cause “more is more”, right?... and we added a second layer of bubbles in a different color. So my second layer is a flat blue glaze. If you look closely, you can see the “purple” bubbles made the white pattern, and the “blue” bubbles made the darker beige color. Who knows how this is going to turn out after firing?… but I bet it’s going to be pretty darn groovy!!!

After my demo, some of the students had their bisque ready to go… let the bubbling begin!!!

One guy even decided to double-down… errr, triple-down?.. and go for bubble glazing three mugs all at one time! Crazy, right?…. I LOVE IT!!!

SO he covered all three with bubbly foaming glaze… and you can see how the pattern stats to show up as the bubbles pop by themselves.

A very random, spider-webby, splattery kind of glaze effect. I hope I get a chance to see these when they come out of the kiln…. so guarantee since this wasn’t my class or my students?! But we’ll see… I’ll keep an eye out for them!

Don’t you love it when the sunlight streaming in through a frozen window hits that plate just perfectly?!