Fiddling around with a little clay tonight… making some leaves… and making some new “plans” hopefully for the “4×4 : Four Makers” Show. Starting small, making more… and trying to figure out where these leaves might end up?! Fingers crossed...

I’ve made a LOT of clay stamps over the years… so why not challenge my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN students to do the same?! So last week in class, they were each tasked with making three handmade clay stamps during class. Easy enough, right?!

Except for the fact that they had to choose three random words sight-unseen… and then make a stamp that represented each word!!! Not too tough… except for the fact that they couldn’t even “test” their stamps to see how they did until they dry & are bisque fired. Some of them were pretty darn thick, so they’re going to take awhile to dry fully!

After days & days of morning grayness, it was great to finally see some sunrise colors this morning over the lakefront. Still a little chilly, but encouraging that Spring might be on its way in the not-so-distant future?!

So we had another “yellow towel situation” in class tonight. I was sharing another package of THE MOST OREOs… but then Carly showed up & pushed us over the top!!! My students are the best!!!

Making a few more stamped mugs on another Mugshot Monday!
Score, slip, attach, repeat… MUGS!!!

A fun little set of green stamped dessert plates… just waiting for a slice of cake, piece of pie, a bunch of brownies, or a pile of OREOs if you’re getting all fancy on me!

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!

I took one of my class demo bowls that was covered with white slip & a few banded details… and started carving into it. Love my DiamondCore Tools for clean & crisp carving lines. Going right through the leatherhard white slip & digging into the darker clay body for a nice contrast. The details & pattern will look great after glazing… as the color difference & grooved carving lines work well with the glaze!

After my class demo on Tuesday night, I had a table full of “not-so-basic” bowls up in my studio for a little more refining… and “quite possibly” a bit of stamping. Allegedly!

So I did a bit of stamping… altered some of the rims a bit more… added some more details & accents. As you know… MORE IS MORE!!!