Celebrating a little TEXTURE TUESDAY with some stamped & soda-fired textures! I love how the soda kiln help accentuate all of the textures kinda randomly… and yet I can still get the fun colors to POP!!! Not every soda-fired piece of pottery has to be dark gray, white or brown!!! Just sayin’…

Handles attached & mugs are done for today! For now they’re under wraps for the night so they can “rest” and let the moisture levels even out before I open them up to dry fully. Then it’s into a bisque kiln… and then a glaze kiln… and then to my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW in less than two weeks! Giddy-up!

A bit more carving with my favorite DiamondCore Tools … creating a fun texture covering the entire exterior of the bowl. For a hot-minute I considered carving the interior the same way… but didn’t… thought it might be too much to clean later?! But now I’m cautiously reconsidering…

So this little bowl got a little too hard to fast… and I missed the “window of opportunity” for stamping it. Instead, I did a bit of fun carving with one of my favorite DiamondCore Tools.

Here are the same bowls from this week’s class demo on how to make bowls on purpose… and then turn them into “not-so-basic bowls.” We did a bunch of altering & slip painting in class… but then you know I come from the school of MORE IS MORE. So I “may have” done a bit more stamping & detailing in my studio this weekend. Allegedly…

And there it is… after “just a few” stampings! I’m always enamored by how the repetition of just one handmade stamp can transform a smooth platter into a crazy cool textured pattern. Each stamped pressed in one by one… by one… by one…

Here we go… the first stamp is always the toughest. Once you press that first one in, you’ve kinda committed to doing it all. And it’s difficult to stamp with my fingers crossed! HA!!!

Fresh out of the soda kiln… and packing them up for this weekend’s ART IN THE BARN! I have a double booth again this year… so it’s twice the shelves & twice the pottery!!! I can’t wait to send some of these hybrid mugs off to new homes this weekend in Barrington!

Celebrating another MUGSHOT MONDAY with a bunch of the stamped mugs that came out of my most recent soda firing. I’m always so excited when you open up the kiln and see such bright, soda-fired colors… and not all of the blasted “dolphin-skin” darkness that so many soda-fired pieces get. Remember, not all soda-fired pottery needs to be black, gray or brown!!!

So today I’m packing up many of these mugs to come with me to ART IN THE BARN next weekend in Barrington. Be sure to stop by… I’ll be in the Lower Barn as usual in my double booth!!!

Another huge THANK YOU to all of our loyal customers who came out to our grassroots ART IN THE GARDEN last weekend. Especially those who got there and snatched up some of our one-of-a-kind collaboration projects! Like these black & white sgraffito platters… where I made the porcelain pieces & metalsmith Amy Taylor did the sgraffito doodles. I think they turned out great.. and they all disappeared very quickly!!! So thanks again for supporting your favorite artists!