All ready for our Thanksgiving Feast!!!
My contribution for the best part of the meal… DESSERT!!!

I made a Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake with a gingersnap cookie crust!
Always fun to have a nice platter to present my dessert on… I hope everyone likes it?!!!

Just doing a little “slip trailing” with melted chocolate!!! Decorating my dessert contribution to today’s Thanksgiving feast. And I wanted a smaller circle to create the ring of dots around… so why not use a smaller bowl upside-down as the “stencil”???

As part of my slip painting demos for summer camp today… I introduced the kids to skip trailing. Going one step further with slip trailed flowers… “dragged” for texture… and drawn on the canvas table as that’s just where we were sitting!!! It’s just clay… it washed right away!!!

As seen on the Lillstreet Show-Off Shelves! You may remember these plates from the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class when they were tasked with slip-trialing a set of two dinner plates. These fun dandelion seed pod plates turned out great… as the last time we saw them they were plain bisque. Shannon did a GREAT job glazing these… especially with the labor-intensive task of using wax resist on every seed before dipping in the celadon glaze! Congrats Shannon… it was worth the extra effort!!!

Huge congratulations to Taylor in my THROWDOWN class… as this is her very first plate AND her first time doing slip trailing!!! And look how great her very first plate turned out!!! Well done Taylor!

This week in our GREAT LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, the “homework” challenge was to make their matching dinner plates from last week’s class more decorative with only SLIP TRAILING as their chosen surface decoration technique. They had the option of going all matchy-matchy… or a design theme that works well together for a tight cohesive set! As some of them had never really done slip trailing before, I think they totally knocked it out of the park!!!

For this week’s LILLSTREET THROWDOWN, my students brought in their homework from last week. Which was trimming & decorating with slip trailing on the four “matching” vases they threw during class last week. It was fun to see how each of them approached the challenge differently… many of them slip trailing for the very first time!!!

THESE DESIGNS ARE AMAZING!!!… and they’re cookies!!! Even better…
Can you just imaging what this artist could do with some liquid clay slip on some well-thrown pots??? Her slip-trailed pottery would be amazing!!!

According to the link on Colossal.com…
“Chef Judit Czinkné Poór is the mastermind behind Hungarian cake decorating shop Mézesmanna, a small studio with a giant social media presence because of the incredible photos and videos they share of their decorative confections. Nearly everything they produce falls into the ‘looks too good to eat’ category, from elaborate illustrations of animals, to intricate patterns inspired by embroidery. Seen here is a quick video of her ‘royal icing’ technique.”

Click here to see the amazing video of Chef Judit decorating a cookie!

UPDATE :
And then shortly after posting this originally,
I got an e-mail from a follower who just felt he had to share… and I’m glad he did!!

From Tim…
“I saw the same post you shared from Colossal on the cookie decorating people (who are fantastic) and decided to Google their work.  Found this gem and figured you would enjoy it!  Have a good weekend!”

Another talented potter making fun pots. The Evanston Lakeshore Arts Festival was Lesley’s first “big” art fair… and I knew she would be a hit!!! So I made sure to snag a great mug early Saturday morning before she sold out.

Lesley has been doing a lot of slip trailing decoration on her work lately. The intricate designs remind me of some traditional henna tattoo patterns. She then rubs some glaze onto the bisqued slip trailing, and wipes it off to give it that “ghostly” haze that pops the decoration right off the pot. Beautiful. And besides these, she was also showing off her whimsical side with fish, owls and other musical pieces!!!

To see more of Lesley Bevan’s work, or to purchase a “treasure” of your own,
click here to check her out on Etsy.

So last Friday night was Empty Bowls at Lillstreet Art Center.
I was too “busy” focusing on my income taxes to attend the event, but twelve of my bowls were there! From what I’ve heard, they sold over 650 bowls and raised over $9,000 for local food-related charities.

Apparently, one of my students brought her Mom & Dad to the event. They looked around, each picked out a bowl… and low & behold, Shea’s Mom picked one of mine!!! Out of a sea of bowls, she picked one of my class demo bowls where I did the white slip swirl through the inside of the bowl. Looks even better with yummy soup inside!!!

And then during class tonight, Shea surprised me with a gift! She gave me one of her beautiful slip-trailed bowls… yeah me! I had mentioned that this one was my “favorites” of the slip-trailed bowls while she was doing it. And she remembered. Weeks later, after firing, glazing & firing again, it finally came out of the kiln. And looked beautiful. Can’t wait to add some of my own soup into it… or better yet, hot fudge with some ice cream… merely the vehicle to get the hot fudge into my mouth! Thank You Shea!!!