Carving through some white slip decoration… playing with my DiamondCore Tools again! Making fun leafy patterns through the widest band of white slip… to create a little color contrast when it’s glazed later.

Always willing to share my DiamondCore Tools with my students… especially when they do some crazy cool carvings like this lidded jar that Ari was working on in class! Crisp & clean carving lines for everyone!!!

Making grooves… pressing stamps… making frames… playing with textures on another Texture Tuesday!

We’re well into Summer now… and you can tell by all of the beautiful flowers blooming everywhere! Like these wonderful zinnias with such great colors, textures & details. Pretty cool for another Texture Tuesday!

After this week’s “bowls om purpose, not a cylinder gone bad” demo… I was left with fifteen bowls to finish up. Sure, I “coulda” left them the way they were. But, you know I co e from the school of MORE IS MORE!!! So here’s a few shots of what I’ve done with them since class!

So for now they’re all stamped & detailed… just waiting to be trimmed!

Last week in my SURFACE DECORATION class, we celebrated the end of the session with another “trading game”… and I came home with this wonderful plate from Christine. The rim of the plate is textured slip “squiggles” with a variety of stains & glazes at work to make this fantastic result!

When passing the shelves of student’s glazed works last night, I was taken by this beautiful plate! Striking details accentuated with a wonderful ombre blend of sprayed glazes. So fun to see that it was made by one of my former students who seems to have succumb to the “more is more” mantra… and is killin’ it!!! This plate is beautiful Kimberly… so pretty that I moved it up to “The Show-Off Shelves”!!! Well done… and make MORE!!!

Last night in class, one of my Beginner’s has started doing these wonderful carvings into her pots… and wondering how to best glaze them to show-off the textures & patterns. We decided to paint black underglaze into the design, gently wipe off the top layer leaving it only in the grooves… then spraying a thin translucent glaze over the entire pot. Can’t wait to see how Kristen’s carved masterpieces turn out!!! She’s so excited…. and well, she should be!!!

Fresh from the garden… not mine of course, but of wonderful friends who love to grow things! And share things… like this beautiful bowl of colors & textures! Oh, how I love rhubarb season!!!

Last week in my SURFACE DECORATIONS class, I showed my students how to use sprigs to decorate their bowls. Basically, a sprig is the “opposite” of a stamp… where you press clay into these handmade “molds”… pop them out… and then score & slip them onto the bowls. So sprigs “stick out”… whereas my usual stamping in more “pressed in.” Kinda fun… we’ll see how this looks after some glaze plays with the new textured surface!