Tonight I loaded another electric bisque kiln. With some larger pieces to fit in, it’s always a little tougher to “pack it tight” like I love to do. And sadly, I didn’t have my usual “arsenal” of kiln filler to fill in all the holes!

Kiln Layer #1 – upside-down cake plates, mugs, cruets and ornaments.

Kiln Layer #2 – more upside-down cake plates, bowls, mugs and two tumblers.

Kiln Layer #3 – A short layer of ovals & ikebanas.

Kiln Layer #4 -Bowls, wall pocket vases, mugs, ikebanas, tumblers and an oval.

As I got closer to the top, I did have to do some creative stacking, or should I say “tumbling” to get a little more squeezed in. You know there’s always room for just a couple more… as long as the lid closes, right?!!!

Okay, so I’m giving them a try…
I’ve been wanting to tackle cake plates for a long time now. But I’ve always heard horror stories of how they tend to slump & sag in the final glaze firing. So I’ve been putting it off for years. And I finally decided I needed to give ’em a try and go for it. Of course I can’t just test one. That’s just not my nature. So I went ahead and made five already! If one slumps, they’re probably ALL going to slump. But I did my best. I compressed & compressed. I tried to do as much as I could to avoid the slumping. My fingers are crossed.

Each of the cake plates are “destined” for the soda kiln. Some of them are made out of soda clay, and couple made out of B-Clay. The top surface of each of them is slip decorated with a colorful flashing slip. I hope that they really “pop” once the soda atmosphere hits them. I dried them a little slower than I normally would, but now they’re finally ready to be bisque fired.

Cake Plate #1

Cake Plate #2

Cake Plate #3

Cake Plate #4

Cake Plate #5

After a little trimming, stamping & slipping, the simple enclosed “cone” forms I threw Wednesday night were converted into wall pocket vases last night in the studio!

After bowling, pizza & ice cream, I went back to the studio for an evening of stamping. The pieces that I threw yesterday were a soft-leatherhard, some more so than others. So I started with the drier ones to allow the wetter ones to stiffen up while I was stamping. My plan worked. All stamped and wrapped up again for the night.

Still making. Still stamping. Still trimming. Still drying.
Still trying to bump up my inventory for this summer’s art fair season! Coming soon!!!

Well… when you make small herb flower pots, you need to make water trays.
Don’t want water leaking all over your windowsills. Since the pots have already
been thrown, stamped, trimmed & drying… I had to make the trays.

I threw these last night… and today they needed a little somethin’-somethin’…
so I did a little stamping, fluting and some other detailing. Followed by a bit of
trimming and now they’re all done & drying!

And now that they’re all done…. I sure hope my calipers were still set
at the right size?! They do look a little small… we’ll see…

Tonight I started with trimmed pots… trimmed, smoothed, refined… still leatherhard.

But if these little cylinders are going to become the little herb flowerpots as planned…
they still need some drainage holes. So I started by marking the placement of where
the drainage holes will be placed. Sure, I could do it freehand… but why?!
When you’ve got some great little tools which practically do it for you?!

These great little disks from MKM Pottery Tools are a huge help when trying to divide into
equal segments. And here’s the cool part, they give you two disks. One for an even number
of segments, and another for an odd number of segments. Plus little holes on the disks that
you can poke through to mark your pots. I’ve got the smaller 4″ disks, but they also sell a
larger 15″ disk for larger pots & platters. Click here for more info on MKM Pottery Tools.

Once the hole placements are marked… it’s time for the power tools!
Sure, I could use a small manual hole punch. Sure, I could carve through by hand.
But why do all that when an electric drill can do the trick much quicker & cleaner?!
Just insert the drill bit of your chosen diameter and drill away… carefully!
Of course you need to make sure your pots are still a good stiff leatherhard. If they are
too dry there’s more of a risk of cracking the pot. If you clay is too wet, it will just kind
of gunk-up the drill bit. Go for stiffer-leatherhard. You’ll be glad you did.

So once the drainage holes were done, I added some colored slip accents into a few of the
stamped impressions. And since these little herb flower pots are going to be soda-fired, I
used a couple different colors of flashing slips. These slips may appear to be whites & beiges
now, but when they’re fired the slip will hopefully turn into shades of oranges & yellows!

So now they’re all drilled… slip decorated… signed…

And drying…  Next up?… I still need to throw the water saucers that will go under them!

So here we are… Month #2 in our Holiday Ornament Challenge!
Sarah Chapman and I have committed to creating a new ornament every month.
Mine will be clay, her’s will be metal. Who knows?… some day maybe a combo?

Sarah’s ornament this month is copper with brass chain connecting the pieces and has
a “torch” patina. She made the copper bells using a form folding technique called the
“Heisted Cup.” Here’s a link for all you metal’s people out there who would like to try it.
Click here… “Heisted Cup.” The process is magical. And I especially love the “torch”
patina effect on copper. So much fun… and maybe three angels will get their wings?!

My ornament started out as a star pillow, but then I got a little carried away. I decided that
the “pillows” don’t need to be closed.  So I left the sides open, leaving a nice void inside.
My plan is to soda-fire these – and I hope that the inside gets some groovy flashing marks.
So far, the plan is that one side is painted with flashing slip, and the other side will have some
glaze inlaid into the impressions. Once they’re fired, they’ll also get a metal hoop going
through the middle of the star to hang from like my original ornaments.

Unfortunately, again this month, I don’t have any fired ornaments to show off yet.
I’m still building enough work to fill the kiln before I can fire it. So the pieces are piling up.
Once I have some pieces fired and ready to show… you’ll see these and all previous
ornaments again. Finished & fired… not just greenware… again!

Mission accomplished… All nineteen small ovals that I threw last night are now stamped
& assembled. They’re under wraps overnight so their moisture levels can balance out a bit.
Tomorrow they’ll get some colored slip details & start drying. But for today…
they’re done… with plenty of time for tonight’s Academy Awards!!!

At one point this evening, I found myself “done” and in between projects.
My wall pocket vases were done and wrapped up for the night. I had finished
making some more of my “February” ornaments and the props I’ll use to fire
them in the kiln. My work tables were full… but it was still early in the evening.
Oh, what to do?… I know, go downstairs to chat in the Lillstreet classrooms!

So after discussing movies and tomorrow’s Academy Awards, I was still
questioning what I was going to do. Go home early, or stay and throw some more stuff?!
I knew that if I didn’t throw more tonight, I would have pieces to work with tomorrow.
So I decided to stay, with the encouragement of Terry Hogan who was still making some
of her precious pierced porcelain pieces. So I went back upstairs and started throwing…
and lucky for me, my studio neighbor Karen Patinkin’s work table was empty so I put it
to use! I moved a few things to her space “temporarily” to make room for my new pieces!

I’ve made ovals in many sizes. This time I decided to go a little smaller. So I wedged up
some small pieces of clay… each one a 1/2-pound of clay. Smaller than I’m accustomed to.
But fun & challenging… especially the wedging was a challenge! Tomorrow I hope to
come back to stamp ’em, floor ’em, colored slip ’em and start ’em dryin’!

After throwing 19 of these bottomless cylinders, I went back downstairs to tell Terry
that I took her advice and stayed. Only to find out that she had already packed up
& gone home….. slacker!