After stamping the stacked vase, I had to do a little trimming on the bottom. Thankfully I have my Giffin Grip which helped support the vase upside-down while I was trimming!

Time to make some berry bowls… so much easier with a power drill to do the “heavy lifting”!!! Plus, the range of drill bits gives you a good selection of hole diameters!

Trimming some bowls with the perfect combo of trimming tools… my favorite trimming tool from DiamondCore Tools & my Giffin Grip. One holds ’em tight, and the other trims them smooth. Makes my job easy… even when my trimming tool blade is wearing thin. One of the benefits of DiamondCore Tools is that they remain sharp even while wearing down… and oh, but wait there’s more.. they even send you a replacement blade to switch out when this one eventually dies. But I still have a good amount of trimming with this one before that happens…

Getting ready for an evening of trimming… one of my favorite parts of the process. There’s something soothing & meditative when you’re “refining” the bottoms of your pots. Especially when you have good tools to make your job easier. Still loving my collection of trimming tools from DiamondCore Tools… always sharp for crisp clean footrings!

Getting ready for a big trimming session… lots of mugs to be trimmed tonight! And thankful for my Giffin Grip every time I pull it out… it’s been well-used & well-loved. One of my favorite tools in the studio… makes trimming so much faster & more fun too!!!

One of my Beginning Wheel students had a glaze run & some kiln wash on the bottom of her bowl. She was trying her best to get it off… and then I offered up my DiamondCore Grinding Bat for Carly to borrow. We put it on her wheel, wet the pot & the bat… and then spun really fast & pressed the bowl down!!! Voila’… smooth & clean! One of the best tools ever… thank you DiamondCore!!!

You gotta love when a fellow studio artist borrows a tool… and then returns it with homemade sweet treats!!! I know I LOVED these faux Oreo-moon pies… and I’m pretty sure Taylor loved trying out my DiamondCore sgraffito diamond stylus tool.

New tools. New toys. New textures! Can’t wait to start working with these new rollers from MKM Pottery Tools! I’m thinking a new batch of “hybrid” mugs are first up!

I was also pondering what to do with that slip-stenciled rectangle inside one of the class demo bowls. Do I try to stamp it?… or carry-on with my carving spree??? So I continued playing with my DiamondCore Tools and carved out this pattern inside the rectangle. I wanted to accentuate the rectangle, but give it something fun to play with the glazes later!

I also felt like this bowl with an ombre’ blend of white & iron red colored slips needed a little sumthin’-sumthin’. So I took out another one of my DiamondCore Tools to do some more carving through the slips. This time a bit of a freeform, organic kind of motif. Thicker grooves that will allow the glaze to pool nicely inside the carving lines… while the slip ombre’ will show through the glaze!