It's that time of year again, time to go to the middle of Wisconsin and cram my brain full of all kinds of new techniques. This is the third year I've gone to the retreat with Michael Harbridge and he never fails to come up with a bunch of new projects. This year we managed to get through 11 projects. Seriously, 11 projects in 2.5 days. Add to that his wife Jeannine makes delicious meals for us all weekend.

We started off the workshop doing surface techniques. Michael had cast or purchased bisqueware and the focus was on specific techniques for each piece. Once we finished these then we moved onto clay.

Our first project was to raku a tree. We used a raku glaze (Jade Gloss from Learn Fired Arts) on the bottom 2/3rds.


On the top 1/3 we used a Mayco Jungle Gem glaze - purple rain. How amazing does this look?! I'll post the videos of me taking this out of the kiln in a subsequent post. It was definitely the heaviest thing I've ever pulled from the kiln. I got a ton of different colors on the bottom.




The back also looks completely different from the front. It's going to be hard to decide which side to put facing out. We also made a base for these that I neglected to take a picture of.




The next project was a flower bowl. We used a brush loading technique to make the petals on the flower inside.




Then we outlined the petals and made the middle of the flower.




What's interesting is that we used Mayco Tuxedo for the outline and the center, but it came out brown. The best we could figure was the kiln fired hot and Tuxedo starts to burn out at a hot cone 6.




On the outside of the bowl, we created a wood grain texture with the new Mayco Engobes. Sorry it's slightly out of focus and I didn't realize it till now. I have to wait till it's shipped to take a new pic.




We continued using the engobes on this shallow bowl and also practiced blending techniques on the banding wheel.




We used rubber stamps in the middle and on the rim (you'll see it in the finished picture). I decided mine needed some dots to round it out.




While this isn't my normal color palate. I do really love how this bowl turned out. I really like the white stamps on the black rim.




On these little mushrooms we did two techniques. The first was on the bottom where we used a brush loading technique to create the depth on the stem. The second was using cobblestone with stroke and coats on the cap. We were supposed to do a brush loading technique on the top too, but I had dots on the brain.




This little guy is the only finished project I was able to bring home with me on the plane. I've got him on my desk right now.




This vase started with a layer of underglaze that was buffed. I attempted doing some banding on the top, but it didn't go so well so it became one solid band. I actually really like the top so I'm glad I messed up. The second band in the middle went better, but this is something I need to practice.




I'll post the video of me putting the hair on the vase later this week.