For this week’s Summer Camp I’m back to Wheelthrowing!!! I have a great group of pre-teens getting all sloppy, messy & muddy… and having a great time on the wheel. Most of them have never thrown on the wheel before… so I’m trying to get them started with some good basic techniques that will stick with them for years to come!

And then THIS happened… TIMBER!!!

As my collection of trees were sitting on the table, one of them started to slump down… one crack… then two… three… more!!! All of a sudden it started to tip over… and then it all slumped down!!! I’m pretty sure it was just way too wet. Freshly thrown clay, kinda thin walls, and far too much slip slathered on the surface… all adding up to wet, goopey & slumping down!!! I think this would definitely work better if I did it on a slightly firmer “pre-thrown tree” and not an instant demo piece!

Last week in my Advanced Wheelthrowing class, they decided that we should tackle Christmas Trees!!!… a little fun with Christmas in July!!! So we threw the trees on the wheel and then tried a few different surface decoration ideas on them… including a few with some thick white slip, and one with rhythmic chattering through white-over-green slip!

It was fun trying different techniques…
including these last four made by Darcy in class!

For some reason, a couple of the folks in my Advanced Wheelthrowng class are all about making holiday pieces in class?!… and you know I’m always up for a challenge. They want to get a head-start on them so that they’re ready for the holidays to come… instead of rushing last-minute & waiting for kiln firings at the end. So last week in class we tackled wheelthrown pumpkins… next up?… CHRISTMAS TREES!!!

All thrown… a very productive day!
Forty cylinders thrown to make forty mugs. The commission isn’t quite that large… but they will be soda-fired so I’m making a few “extras” in case some of them don’t turn out so well?! You know how soda-firing is kinda random… I can only “control” so much!

Back to making cylinders… back to making MUGS!!!
My favorite thing to make! Lucky for me, I’m working on a big commission project for a lot of specialty mugs! Here we go…

Another day of Wheelthrowing Camp today… with the kids throwing again on the wheel. Let’s just say that not all of the pots made it safely to the end! Like these sad little pots by Madelyn!

Just a few pots… trimmed, decorated, initialed & “coded” for my campers! Not bad for two days of throwing… as these two trays are just for my morning campers! My afternoon kids have different trays! These will all be bisqued quickly so the kids can glaze their pots on Friday morning!

Today my summer campers trimmed & decorated the pots that they had thrown on Monday & Tuesday… some carving, some stamping, some colored slips. A few campers even went one step further and added handles to make their first mugs!!