I saw these glasses while watching the latest season of The Orville. They were conical on the top and cylindrical on the bottom. These are my first attempts at making them in clay. They leave a little to be desired.

I made this one first. It is the same top as a mug that I tried out from a class I took recently. I think the bottom this one is both too tall and too straight. I feel like asthetically the two pieces don't go together well. I carved in the lavender on the bottom and that actually helped make it more cohesive.




Initially I thought the problem was that the bottom was too tall for the top. It wasn't until later that I realized that there was a shape issue. When I realized the shape issue I flared out the bottom. Instead of carving this one my plan is to make the bottom a solid color (Lavender Mist) and see if that balances it out. More on this concept to come.

I had forgotten about this jewelry until I was cleaning up. I made it back in December, but needed to add the neclace and earring hardware. The picture is a bit messy, but I love how the actual pieces turned out.

I mentioned earlier in the week the class that I have been taking. There's been a lot of focus on texture in that class. In the class we were shown how the texture can just be joined together. I'm finding that in my work I either don't want a seam at all (like in the lavender earlier this week) or I want to accentuate the seam like I've done here. I'm learning a lot, but also finding my style. January was a really busy month for work so I'm really behind on the class, but finding time to catch up and experiment now.

I had saved the last of the lavender from my garden last year. Threw it in a baggy in the freezer. It only took 10 minutes or so for it to thaw out enough to use. Lavender is pretty hearty when it comes to pressing it into clay. I made some of my normal mug size for this. The fun thing about the lavender is that even though I'm using the same 12 or so pieces - I never put them down exactly the same so each piece is unique.




I've been taking a virtual cups class in January and got this cute little shot glass template from it. It's the reverse of most shot glasses since it has a larger base, but I think it's going to be really sweet. With the lavender on it I think it could also be a really sweet tiny bud vase.






Also from the cups class comes this new truncated cone mug shape. I only made a couple because I'm worried its a little tippy. Going to see how the finished product comes out and decide whether I modify it any. I have an idea for a wine/drink cup that has this shape on the top and then a cone bottom. I'm experimenting now to get the right shape.

When I was dropping items off last fall at the Carrol County Gallery of Gifts I picked up a handful of ginko leaves. Literally picked them up off the ground. We don't have any ginko near me that I'm aware of, but the street there was lined with them. I put them in a baggy in the fridge when I got home intending to use them "soon."






Well, time got away from me. This weekend when I pulled the leaves out they had dried out. Still usable, but now one time use vs being able to use them again. The leaves provided a nice texture, but were not easy to get off the platter. I ended up using tweezers and still didn't get all the pieces off. They will burn off in the bisque kiln.






I'm still thinking on how to glaze this. I think I want the leaves to be the golden color from when they fall, but I don't think I have a glaze that's that color golden that will keep the fine line detail from the leaf texture. Maybe I'll go opposite and leave the leaves and do the gold around. Any suggestions?

No one tells you how difficult it is to clean a hollow die. When it comes out you can barely even see the metal.

The extruder is fun. The teeth on this one make it so that I'm never exerting too much force. I saw videos of people who are like standing on the wall and still struggling. This isn't no effort, but it is somewhat light effort to get things through.

I made all of these into vases by cutting a bottom and adding it on. I'll get fancier as I experiment more.

This reminds me of the symbol from the TV show Charmed, but I think it will make a really cool bud vase.


This die is like a giant noodle. I think it's going to look awesome with a glaze that breaks.




This one came out with some personality




There's something about a hexagon. I think this shape might make a really nice size mug.

I bought myself an extruder for the holidays. Just got it mounted. Craig decided it needed to be mounted to a board then to the wall so that it was attached to two studs. It might be overkill or it might be saving the walls. I went with one from Steel Potter at The Ceramic Shop. It's not well known, but I was obsessed with their dies.

I love the bowls that I make and how big they are, but they don't stack very well. I wanted to play with some stackable bowls. I made 4 blank and 4 crab. This is the last crab one I made that I feel like came out the best. I've gotten really good at mug shapes, but definitely struggle more with bowls. This one is interesting because the diameter of the top and bottom are much different. I still have to clean up the rim once it's leather hard.

I bought a set of these molds for myself over the holidays. There's no texture on them now because I want to play with glaze techniques later. These two vases are the small and the medium, haven't had a chance to make the large yet.

I feel like I'm getting better at smoothing the clay in the puzzling molds.

I got these balloon stamps not too long after my hot air balloon ride. This fall was such a whirlwind that I didn't get a chance to use them. I wanted to make them a bit 3D. I'm hoping the baloons really pop with the glaze.

Making my way through all the blog posts. I've got a routine down to fix all the pages, but there are just so many that it takes a long time. I am going to cry if Google breaks this too at some point. I'm travelling for work for the next few days so my progress will likely slow.

I found a feasible work around for the broken images where I don't have to migrate everything. I'm hoping that Google won't break this as well, but they've been rather close lipped about it so who knows. The process isn't hard this way - copy the code, paste into word, find and replace, copy, paste back, and then publish. I fixed all the glaze pages this morning. The blog pages will take more time, I have almost 500 blog posts - how did that happen?!

When I was looking at the reindeer mold this tree popped up and I wanted to try it out. What I coudln't see in the picture on Amazon is that there are non-colored dots outside of the tree. I'm also not sure if the texture is deep enough. It doesn't help that I over corn starched a bit. I will keep you posted how this comes out (if it comes out).

I've found a couple of work arounds for the broken images, but I'm not really happy with any of them. Also I have nearly 500 posts and pages and updating every one individually is a daunting task. Google suggested a work around using a slightly different format for linking than I've used in the past. I tried it out on my post on the reindeer ornament and while it works, it looks terrible. It makes it look like all the photos are slightly out of focus.

The other alternative I've found is uploading directly in Blogger which is the tool that I use to host this web site. It works and it's what I'm using for the photo below, but while uploading an image is fairly easy, it doesn't actually give me a way to manage photos. I also haven't found a way to upload more than one image at a time which would mean real slow going for fixing all previous posts. I've been looking into other photo hosting sites, but it seems like all of them almost act like social media sites posting your videos out to the community. Not that I think I produce things that people are going to want to steal on a daily basis, having them in that arena feels like it's more likely that people will take my photos and use them for another context.

I'm exhausted by this whole thing and I haven't even had to do any migration of photos yet. This all just feels like it should be simpler. sigh.

In other news I am still making things even though I haven't been posting. This is the first time I've used coils of Laguna 60. I kept putting off cleaning my handheld extruder becuase it felt difficult. I ended up buying a second extruder on sale during the holidays. Problem solved, no cleaning needed. Obviously having two large extruders would be cost prohibitive, but the handheld ones aren't that expensive.

I've been thinking about luminaries for a few weeks now so of course that's where I started. I made a few different shapes to decide which ones I like best. I also had an idea for a little luminary gnome that I tried out, but I put it on too tight and it did not make it off the cone. I am definitely going to try again.

Update: I was trying out Google's work around for images on this post. It looks terrible, but I don't have a solid alternative yet. If you click on the individual images they should render and not look blurry. Apologies, and thank you for bearing with me while I figure this out.

Back in December I was searching for something on Amazon and they recommended this cute little silicone mold. I loved it, but I decided that it was too late to do anything for this year. I left it in my cart though and last week decided to buy it (and a few more texture items coming soon). I couldn't wait to try it out, but not working with a lot of silicone molds there was definitely a learning curve.


I started with a fairly wet piece of clay. I know enough about molds to know that dry clay would crack.




As I was removing the clay I quickly realized that with the arms being separate that they needed to come out first since they are recessed. I set them aside and worked on the main body.




I learned quickly to be gentle as I decapidated a couple of reindeers. Since this mold is a bit like a Y it definitely took figuring out how to loosen it without breaking off parts. I had to be very gentle.




I also learned that leaving extra clay on the back beyond the seems meant that I'd have to do more shaping/cutting later.

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