I have been a busy girl...

I have been working hard in the studio on various projects. One is a commission for a friend from high school. It is a large vase with family names, words and significant numbers. He wants to surprise his wife with it for an anniversary gift so I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that all goes well. I found it quite a challenge not only getting all the words on there but also forming the vase without it cracking.

Above is a shot of it drying. Kind of hard to see all the lettering but once it is bisque fired I will stain it to really pop the words. Today it is firing very slowly in the bisque kiln.

I am also trying to get some new work for my galleries finished plus I have started marketing a small item that so far has been a great money maker and am producing a good number of those to fulfill orders.

New vase...

Here is a recent vase I made. It is approx. 8" tall by 7 " wide.

Good tip...

I am starting to clean the studio up for the next round of creating and scraping shelves is something I do not enjoy. I read this tip in a magazine a while back so unfortunately I can't give kudos to the person who wrote it but before my last glaze firing I sprayed some water on my pristine new shelf (that I bought because some of my old ones are so crusty) dusted it with alumina hydrate and then misted with more water. Put it in the kiln loaded pieces glaze fired and it was awesome!!! Nothing stuck at all! In the past I have had the black underglaze that I sign my name with stick to kiln wash. Sometimes I also do little drawings and the bottoms and certain colors would stick but not this time! Then I laid out newspaper and just dusted the shelve off and am going to reuse the alumina. If you have never tried this I highly recommend it.