Can you tell I've been in a creative place recently? I've been playing with a bunch of new ideas and designs. I think it's because I've been so stuck at work. I need the creative to come out somewhere.

I made a few size fish templates probably over a year ago and they didn't didn't work in practice because the fin was too long. All of a sudden I had the idea to perform surgery on the tail. I think it makes for a really cute little fish plate.




Here you can see the surgery I did on the tail. My brain is buzzing around other animals I might be able to do this with.

Made some garlic plates. I was at a show last year where the woman across from was also pottery, but very different. Her pottery was mostly hanging plates, iPad stands, and other large items not really for food. She did have a basket of garlic plates that were selling like crazy. I had mental note to make a few to see whether or not they would be popular for me.

I made 4 test plates and tried out different Diamond Core carving tools on them.


My favorite ended up being the FP6.

I had the cone tops from the candle holders and something told me not to squish them. Initially I was thinking I'd widen the hole and make them tapered candle holders. Then it hit me - tiny ring dishes. I added little flowers on top. Dependning on the shrinkage I might also be able to say tea light candle holders. They're so cute though!

Something got me thinking about displaying and burning candles recently. I was thinking about ideas for design and realized that I have cone cutters from DeLa Designs. I decided to start there, but quickly realized that I needed a wider base. On the first one I cut a couple of time to get to the right width. However, after the first time I knew about how much I needed so I set the tops aside (more on this later!).

The cutter I used on the top was also from DeLa Deisgns. I think it was a sunflower cutter. I let the two separate pieces setup just enough so the flower wouldn't sag and then slip and scored really well. I also added a coil on the outside.

Quick update on fixing images - I am continuing to work through fixing the images on the blog. It's a very manual process, but I have everything from March of 2023 to the present fixed. As I have an hour here and there I'm making the updates. It's tedious so I can only do it for so long before I need a break.

I was making several leaf vases and had an interesting turn of events. When I was taking off one of the leaves there was a slight tear where the clay had just gotten too thin. My first instinct was to smoosh it, but before I could act on that instinct I thought - what if I cut out the leaves?


This is what a normal vase looks like without any leaves cut out. Eventually I glaze the leaves and leave the rest bare clay with a coat of clear.




Initially, my thought was to cut out all the leaves. However, for this particular vase several of them were really close together and I thought I'd have a structural problem. I still might do that (on purpose this time) for a future vase, but for this one I started to strategically cut out leaves.




I made sure to do cuts on all sides so that it would have a more uniform look. I think in the end my mistake is going to end up being a really cool luminary.

During ClayShareCon I was enamored by Alexandria Pottery's handbuilding jig. I bought the travel mug jig with the cutter and an extender. It essentially a 3D printed flexible tool with a "key" that has two positions - one for building and one for getting it out. Alexandria did a video on this and I highly recommend watching her if you're interested. She's much smoother at it than I am having practiced. I started with the simple shorter practice mug. Alex makes 3 holes in the top, but that felt like a lot at once so I'm starting with one. In all likelihood I'll find that she's right and I'm wrong, but my plastic travel mug only has one hole so in my head it doesn't make sense to have 3.


My second one is slightly better than my first.




Using the extender its only 2 inches taller, but it made a world of difference. Cornstarch was helpful with the regular jig. With the extender it was necessary! I lost my third tall one when I forgot the corn starch.




For the first one I made I wasn't really thinking about where to put a handle so I ended up creating an indent and a little nub to help hold it up. I think it will be ok, but it's also all an experiment.




For the second one I went with a handle. I had to rethink the handle to make it proportionally big enough for this cup.