Doing a little bit of trimming quickly before teaching tonight. Love when the ribbons come flying off cleanly & quickly… especially when working with my DiamondCore Tools & Giffin Grip. The perfect combo for some quick trimming fun!!!

After my class demo, my SURFACE DECORATION students went off to start carving on their own pots. So much fun to see them using different techniques & tools to create their own special carvings, patterns & textures!

This week with my SURFACE DECORATION class, we tackled carving & slip trailing… okay, so mostly carving! We talked about carving textures & patterns into our pots with different tools to get different effects. Like some clean carved grooves using some of my DiamondCore Tools … and fun little circles with an old drill bit.

Celebrating EARTH DAY by playing in some goopy-gloppy mud!!! More fun in the studio… more FREE CLAY!!!… after a LOT of work turning my scraps into viable clay again. Ahhh… the fun of reclaiming clay!

Doing a little stamping on a couple class demo vases… before you going down to teach another class tonight! Just trying to get to keep one step ahead…

Packed tight from top to bottom, as well as the three shelves deep. It’s a lot of pots & mini tiles trying to utilize as much surface space as possible… trying to get the most out of every soda kiln firing!

Backing it up a couple days… to Friday when I finally finished my glazing & wadding, and took my pots down to the kiln room to start loading the soda kiln. Since my studio is on the second floor of Lillstreet, and the soda kiln is on the first floor… my pots need to travel downstairs in the rickety freight elevator. So I’ve learned to use some masking tape as “seat belts” to keep everything place during the journey.

Sadly, not quite everything fit into the kiln last night as I loaded into the wee-hours of the morning. As usual, I went through the mental waves of “I don’t have enough… I have way too much… I’m a gonna need to glaze more… this is never gonna fit… what am I doing… I think I need chocolate… still a lot of pots… oh, I think it’s going to be close… can I squeeze just a few more in?”

Well, the answer was NO. So it looks like I have a few leftovers… a nice start on building work for my next soda kiln, right???

Wiping off the top surface… to reveal a now-filled-in stamped pattern. Remember, these are all going into the soda kiln… so I don’t really need to glaze the outside of the pots. I’ll do a liner glaze inside… but leave the exterior for the soda magic to do its tricks!!!

Working on the glaze inlay first… filling the stamped impressions with some tenmoku glaze. And then I will be wiping off the top surface to clean it off… leaving the glaze only in the patterns!