The kids were busy working in clay making their thematic dinnerware placesetting for FIRE, FORGE & FEAST Summer Camp. Lots of fun, lots of terra cotta, lots of dirty hands!!! It’s gonna be a busy week!!!

And one “special plate”… also in the works…

So for now they can dry… for tomorrow we will glaze them with Teacher’s Choice colors.
A quick single-fire so they can be done by Friday morning. We need a fast turn-around.

Yesterday was the last day of my Wheelthrowing Summer Camp.
They had a LOT of work to finish up. Glazing their freshly bisqued stoneware pots… as well as trimming & painting their terra cotta pieces with glaze!!! We finished just in the nick of time… with about 10 minutes for lunch!!!

The calm before the storm. All set-up and waiting for my Summer Campers to arrive this morning. It’s Terra Cotta Day… wheelthrowing and making a gooey slimey mess!!! Buckets, tools, sponges & ware boards at the ready!!! To see a fun video of the “gooey mess” check out my INSTAGRAM feed!!! @firewhenreadypottery

So my campers remembered “almost” everything from yesterday…
Apparently the discussion we had about pulling your long hair back into a pony tail was missed by one of my Campers. Yesterday she was fine, today not so much.

So we were throwing some nice pots when all of a sudden her hair got caught
in her centered ball of clay as she was bending down over it.

Stick. Adhere. Spin. Twist. Clump. Twist. Dreadlock… this could be bad…
luckily she was still smiling & laughing!

She asked if I could help her fix it… of course I said yes…
and of course I told her to hang on a second while I grabbed my camera…
and the, and only THEN, did I help her get out of the mess.

When we finally got her extricated from the wheel, I took her to the sink
to do a little cleaning, scrubbing & de-tangling of her hair.
Surely she will remember to pull her hair back tomorrow, right?!

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Another fun day at Summer Camp… luckily they remembered what I taught them yesterday, and today they made a LOT of pots!!! Tomorrow is detailing, decorating, handles, trimming and finishing this batch of stoneware pots. Thursday we switch to terra cotta and Friday we glaze everything!!!

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It’s another week of Summer Camp!!! This week I’m teaching Wheelthrowing again….
and the mud-covered shenanigans have started already!!!

So my campers this week learned TWO very important lessons… the hard way!

NUMBER ONE : Dried terra cotta is VERY fragile… and cannot be repaired.
Instead, any broken pieces needed to re-bulit from scratch very quickly!

NUMBER TWO : Put the lid on the underglaze jar before you shake it!!!

My Chess Camp kids have made it to their final day. All of their pieces have been made and all they needed to do today was paint them with colorful underglazes. So much fun to see their sets all set out in rows so they can paint in assembly-lime fashion. I gave them some directions… and a LOT of warnings about how fragile their dry clay pieces are at this stage. Amazing how some color can really bring their pieces to life!!!

Look at these… can you guess what characters they are???

Did you guess Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia???  —  ‘cuz you should have!

“GO” or no “GO”… Pokemon is still popular with the kids!!!

By the end of camp today, we had a little breakage, but successfully made it to the end. All of the pieces are on the carts drying, and waiting for one of the kid’s monitors to cover them with a thin coat of clear glaze. Soon enough, they’ll be fired and going home with the kids!!!

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Another good lesson for my campers… if they let their terra cotta dry too fast so that it’s no longer usable, we’re NOT going to toss it in the reclaim bucket. The easy-out. Instead, we’re drying it out and then they need to pulverize it so we can quickly turn it into terra cotta slip for them to use! Tough work… but it’s all part of the process.