Clay /8

Ben is back home which is amazing for lots of reasons including kiln firing!! Plus getting to have a lovely boyfriend again - win/win! We got to run through a bisque firing the other day (the first stage - getting the clay hard) which I'm sharing today. I then became a mad man for the next couple of days painting clay to run the second firing which I'll save for another post!)

This is what it looks like inside the kiln. We normally put in a few shelves to maximise space but we didn't have high enough props (we built too big!) so this is probably a bad example of how to stock a kiln efficiency wise!

Mermaid!

Happy Bear! 

Both the mermaid and the bear I ended up devoting lots of time to make sure they were nice and smooth

All together now!

Tilikum! Have you guys seen black fish? A little tilikum tribute piece after finding out he passed away :( :(

Bandicoot! I wanted to see if I could devote less time to a piece (skip the sanding/smoothing) and get a similar outcome once it was covered in gloss - results to come!

Baby roo! It's easy to sand a piece like this (no vulnerable parts to break off!)

A bowl of badges in the making!

Tiny Spoon

Teeny tiny bowl

Some flowers and brooches

Mumma kangaroo! She tragically broke (tail and foot) pre-firing, actually whilst I was sanding/smoothing which led to the prospect of skipping that step altogether. I'm a super clumsy/messy soul so whenever a project calls for supreme delicacy I normally don't excel :p In my defense clay (pre-bisque fired) is super fragile!!

A little Shaun tan inspired figurine.  He was holding a star and a moon (which you can see a couple of shots up) but I managed to break both off!

Test tiles! If you follow me on Instagram you would have seen these completed :) The reason to make paint test tiles is to see how the different glazes will look.

Bunny!

And a cockatoo. I actually bought this amazing cockatoo lamp shade from a garage sale the other week and then accidentally broke it when I got it home (are you seeing a trend here?). Ben suggested I make a cast of it but it turns out it was easier just to sculpt a new one then learn a new skill of casting - I'm sure there's a life lesson there.

Next blog post i'll show you how they went after being painted and fired!