delicious decals

I thought some of my plain cups needed a little livening up, so i bit the bullet and applied some decals! After I spent ages playing around, I finally came up with the great idea of cutting the decals, and applying two or more pieces of decal to each cup. I really like the concept of seeing only part of the decoration or design, which comes out really well when the cups are sitting with both sections of decal visible. After more fiddling, putting decals on, taking decals off, moving decals around, here are some results:

At first, I didn't think that these larger decals were going to work, or look any good, but I was pleasantly surprised when they worked well and looked good.

All these cups (and more!) are currently available at in.cube8r gallery in Brisbane. Keep an eye on their facebook pages (in.cube8r and in.cube8r Brisbane) for regular updates on what's in store and what nifty handmade things are happening around your neck of the woods.

Don't forget to keep an eye on my facebook page too, where you may see some sneek-peek's and get some little birdie whispering secrets in your ear!

first batch out of the kiln

I do apologise, as it has taken me a little while to upload these images!

I am very pleased with the way that these spools have turned out - the colours are lovely, and I was able to get the matt glaze on the end of the spools just about spot on :)

I used some 'vintage' Mayco underglazes, as they were nice pastel shades, and also had a gentleness about the colours as well - not ghastly opaque as some can be. But being a little on the older side, it's suggested on the label that the firing temp is only ~1040 degrees, and here I am putting them on porcelain and firing to 1260 degrees! Because they have been fired a bit higher than they would have preferred, the pale blue and the lavender (which you cannot tell is lavender as it has gone quite blue!) have developed quite a gloss. The peach and the pink have retained their nice matt-ness though.

I feel that the spools need a bit of a yellow and a geen, so I have popped some tests in the kiln of a trial 'vintage' yellow underglaze, as well as my attempt to make a pastel green underglaze. For that I mixed dark green and white underglazes together, as well as mixing some green body stain into white underglaze. Im actually quite looking forward to seeing how that have turned out!

porcelain spools are on their way!

I have been working on these little babies for a while now, and they are now in the final stages! Yipee! I applied the pretty pastel underglazes yesterday (and as you can see in the bottom image only some have been wiped back when the images were taken), and I dipped the ends into my super-duper special matt glaze today, and they are sizzling away to 1260 degrees as we speak. I can't wait to pull them out of the kiln tomorrow :)