This week in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, my students killed it again… twice! Their first challenge was to take one of the “perfectly” trimmed bowls from the previous week and start carving away parts & pieces to turn it into a kind of basket bowl. They had to have a good design, clean cuts & keep enough structure intact to keep it all together.

The “real” challenge though?… they were tasked with carving away more than half of the original weight of the bowl! Tougher than it sounds… that’s a LOT of clay to take away and keep your bowl still in one piece! Huge congratulations to Claire & Will for making the weight… everyone else got SO close… and we only had one collapse! mwah, mwah, mwah…

While working on adding some details & accents to the bowls from our class demo, I ran across the one that Chelsea did for us… and I didn’t quite know what to do with it. So I started carving… and then THIS happened!

Always fun to see one of my students wielding her DiamondCore Tools in class! Like last night when Darcy was carving cool starburst patterns on some cylinder cups… soon to be filled with wax for some beautiful candles!

Celebrating a little TEXTURE TUESDAY with a wonderful cement-block carving I found along the lakefront. In Chicago, a lot of the shoreline is protected by oversized cement blocks that also make seating areas. This block has been carved with some traditional imagery… no idea how long something like this would take?!

So I kinda forgot about this bowl… trimmed & under plastic… still a remainder from our first night of SURFACE DECORATION class! We started with an ombre’ blend of green & white slips… which could have been enough. But more is more, right?! So I finally finished it off today with some decorative carving using a P1 curved tip carving tool from DiamondCore Tools. So much better now!

Last night in class, Darcy asked if she could borrow some of my DiamondCore Carving Tools… and of course I said YES!!! She was excited to try some carving on her large vase from last week’s class… and was kind of amazed at how sharp & crisp the lines were!!!

In my Advanced Wheel class on Thursday, I did a little sgraffito demo for them on the demo platter I had thrown the week before. It’s a little different as I’m used to white clay with a dark slip… whereas this one is a dark clay with a light slip. I used a colored flashing slip, so “the plan” is that this will go into a soda kiln at some point… just to see what happens. I’m not sure the carving is done yet… but this is as far as I got during the class demo with my DiamondCore Carving Tools. I’ll do a bit more carving & cleaning up before I let it start drying.

Last night in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class, one of my students wanted to do a bit of sgraffito carving… some creepy & scraggly trees just in time for Halloween! So what better way than to let her borrow my assortment of DiamondCore Tools to get her carving groove on!!!

Sure, I could have left this bowl with the simple ombre colors gradating from blue to orange… but MORE IS MORE, right?! So I decided to do a little carving through the colored slip with my DiamondCore Tools instead!

So one of my Saturday morning “Intermediate” students bought her first few DiamondCore Tools… and then quickly set-off on carving a tall vase. Looks like she’s already well along the way down that proverbial “slippery slope”!!! Way to go Stephanie – looks great. Love all the crazy-cool textures!!!