Recently...

...I have been working on some new bowls.  I threw them over a couple of days (not quite a production thrower yet!), and most are the perfect size for a big scoop of your favourite flavour of ice-cream!

I am preparing to glaze them with soft glossy pastel colours on the inside, and have a clear gloss on the outsides.  At the end of last week I did up a number of tests, and couldn't wait to get the test tile out of the kiln this morning!

before:

after:

I am quite happy with most of the colours, but of course I won't be using them all! As I used an assortment of powdered stains (glaze, body, multipurpose etc) some of them didn't quite work out.  The Lilac and Pink Body Stain unfortunatley made the base glaze loose its gloss.  I'm very much so looking forward to getting some of these onto my bowls!

porcelain tea lights

a belated happy 2012 to everyone! well it has certainly been a slow start for the year, due to this, that and the other...and the other other, but im all ready to get back into the studio, and back into my old productive habits!

Over the last few months I have slowly been working my way through my first batch of porcelain tea light holders.

Some of them are quite strongly decaled (images above), in comparison to others (image below), however I still have some lovely plain porcelain ones too (bottom image).

I played around a little bit with the glazing, and some are deliciously glossy all over, and others are glazed on the inside, with the smooth bare porcelain on the outside. Regardless of their glazing, they are all quite thin, making them nice and translucent.

Although designed as tea light holders, they of course have many other possible uses - whatever your heart so desires.

The tea lights pictured above, and many others, are currently available at in.cube8r gallery in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, and I can see a second batch on the horizon! More pictures are available on my Facebook page.

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 :)

new little cups

I have recently been able to do some more throwing (which makes me very happy). I am a big fan of plain and simple, however I do think that these may need a little something...any ideas?

(two of these have a commercial clear gloss glaze, but the other two have my lovely clear matt glaze - I had to thin it out quite a lot, as when it was thicker it crazed quite badly, and went very cloudy, but now it looks and feels great! I love it!)

blog feature

The more than lovely Emmaline asked me to participate in an artists' feature on her handmade blog, which I was so excited to be art of. Thanks Emmaline!

She is doing a great job of promoting awesome handmade stuff around the Brisbane area, make sure you have a look :)