While the whole “Keep Calm…” trend is wearing thin, this one struck a chord with me!

And now I’m apparently very “calm” now… after making a batch of new stamps!

Okay, so now I have “official” Fire When Ready Pottery Pinterest boards you can follow.

Yes, I’ve been snowed in and uploading all day.
Five different Pinterest boards full of my pottery images for you to pin & share!
Just do a quick Pinterest Search for the following…

Fire When Ready Pottery

Fire When Ready: Stamping

Fire When Ready: Mugs

Fire When Ready: Tiles

Fire When Ready: Textures

And more to come… although I’m still not sure what I’m doing?!

Seems like so long ago… but in my last soda kiln, I fired some new work including these textured wall pillows. I’ve been trying to come up with a new piece for the holiday Home Shows. Something new for people to hang on the wall. I’ve already made ceramic masks and tiled ClayQuilts. Oh, but what to do next… and I came up with these. I started by making these textured round tiles that hang flat to the wall… with a little depth to pop them off the wall. Here’s a quick “teaser’ of a few of them as I was unloading the kiln.

I made them in three different sizes.  My hope is that people will make their own collections, and decide how to hang them on their walls in all different configurations. I threw together this first one on my living room wall as an example for the first Holiday Home Show. It’s a quick “constellation” of textured tiles.

And now I’ve thrown together a few more examples of how they can be used.
Random constellations. Random groupings. Different sizes. Same sizes.
Straight lines. Trios. Doubles. Singles. So many ways to play with them on your wall.

Pick & choose… plenty to choose from to make your own “constellation.”
I had fun making them, so there’s a pretty good chance there will be more coming soon!
Yet, I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to show them at the summer art fairs???

A quick glimpse “before & after” a cone 10 reduction glaze firing…
just in time for this Saturday’s Holiday Home Show.

Here’s a stamped platter leatherhard “before”… and glazed “after.”

And here’s a stamped bowl leatherhard “before”… and glazed “after.”

Night two of glazing was quite productive. Things were literally stacking up.

After I added the wadding these pieces went onto my rolling studio cart to make room on the table to glaze even more! Especially since I’m glazing to fill my own soda kiln AND share a cone 10 glaze kiln with two other studio members. Glazing for two different kilns at the same time is a little daunting.

Here’s the third batch of textured pillow tiles… the smallest size of the three. My goal is to have the three sizes so people can pick & choose and create their own “constellations” to hang on their walls. But the BIG question is… What to call them??? The “working title” has been “Textured Wall Pillows.” But I’d like to come up with something a bit catchier. Any suggestions?!

While my computer has been down, I’ve been getting a lot done in the studio. Coincidence?!… maybe I should “break” my computer more often?! Anyway, I’ve been working on some new pieces with a lot of textures & patterns. Here’s a couple sneak-peeks…

So here they are… I’ve been making some pieces that I hope will hang on the wall. My plan is to make them in a couple different sizes so people can put them together for a great wall hanging piece! We’ll see if my plan comes together…

The latest batch of “slender” oil lamps were stamped today… and trimmed…
and “flashing” slipped… and are now drying.  Let the process continue…

Tuesday night I showed my class how to make larger bowls and platters.
I made three pieces for them… but I felt two of them needed a little somethin’-somethin’.
Tonight I pulled out some stamps and did a bit of decorating. So here goes…

Starting with the plain bowl that I threw Tuesday night. It was wrapped up under plastic and tonight it was on the “wetter-side” of leather heard. Perfect for stamping!

Once the bowl was all stamped, I moved on to stamp the platter too. So I found the stamp I wanted and began indenting one by one by one… all the way around!!!

Eventually both of these class demo pieces were stamped and done for the night. So I put them both back under plastic so they can dry a bit slower. I’m hoping that tomorrow I might be able to trim both of them.

Tonight I stopped in the studio to do a little “refining” of some of my class demo bowls. They were still a little wetter than I would normally like, but they were “almost” ready to be stamped. So I stamped a couple of them… and the others will need to wait a little longer for attachments & trimming.

Bowl #3 – With a simple, single row of stamped impressions just below the flange.

Bowl #4 – And if a single row is good, a lot more of stamps would be a LOT better, right?

Bowl #6 – I took the four-pinched bowl and “ovaled” it a bit, and then stamped two sides opposite each other.

Bowl #9 – Each of the eight pinched points were accented with a single stamp. I’m not a huge fan of actually seeing the pinch marks, so there’s a very good chance that there may be more added to this bowl before we call it done!