Making a quick batch of flower pots… while looking forward to my “Plants & Pottery Pop-Up” down near Peoria over the third weekend of May! If I play my cards right, I’ll be headed down with a bunch of pottery, as well as some plants to fill them!!!

One of the requests from my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class was to tackle some soup or chili bowls. I’ve never made them quite honestly… but always up for a challenge! So I’m starting with a matched set of six! We’ll call it a test run…

Cylinders trimmed & drying… wait, WHAT?!

Perfectly smooth? No stamping? No texture? No patterns? Don’t panic… I kinda have a plan for these! You know how I love a good plan! More soon…

Well, that’s another batch of mugs with attached handles!
Done in “plenty” of time… now off to teach class tonight!

And what’s part of tonight’s class demo?… per Jeannine’s request… pulling & attaching handles! Gonna do this all over again later tonight… but maybe just a few during class!!!

Pulled some handles & looped them over so they can set-up a bit before attaching to the mugs. It’s not like I pulled all that many… it’s just that they look kinda cool from all directions!!!

Getting ready to pull some mug handles. Starting with carrot-shaped nuggets of clay… but it looks a bit like Stonehenge has toppled over like Dominoes?!

Getting back to basics… throwing cylinders…
making textured impressions one-by-one, stamp-by-stamp!
You know how I love making mugs… always a good place to start up again!

Mug 1

Mug 2

Mug 3

Mug 4

Mug 5

Mug 6

Mug 7

Mug 8

Mug 9

Mug 10

Mug 11

Mug 12

And for now they’re back under wraps drying a bit to leatherhard… at which point I’ll be able to trim the bottoms and then add handles! Back to making mugs again!

More trimming, more fun.
You know how I love trimming…
especially with my DiamondCore Tools & Giffin Grip!
Two of my favorite tools working well together to get the job done.
Spinning fast, gripping tight & trimming sharp!
Especially on these pieces still left over from last session… before the holidays!!!

I’ve had these photos for awhile… but never to late for a little flashback to my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class last Fall when we focused on making mug handles for the night! I showed them how I pull my handles separately… starting with a little carrot-shaped nugget of clay. Smoothy & evenly pulled, then looped over on themselves so they can stiffen-up with a nice curved loop. So many people avoid making mugs because they HATE making handles… but it was my goal to get this group over that hurdle through simple repetition.

Feels great to be getting back into “production mode”…
starting off with some smaller vases with some smaller stamps!
Gotta start somewhere, right???