Clay /12

I'm back with a huge hoard of clay goodness to share! Over the last few months I've been busy making to fill up a kiln load for firing.  After the first fire it's then a busy couple of days painting all the pieces for the second firing - the exciting glaze fire! In this post I'm going to include a bunch of the pieces at their bisque stage for you to see because I personally love seeing progress shots!

Still loving terracotta!

I really dig the glaze on these guys!

I kept this bowl super simple + natural with just some white slip at the base that I scratched into.

I saw a trick online about making pendants using a syringe which I had to give a go

After months and months I have finally finished Tilikum! So proud that I saw this to completion.  I had an idea in my head right from the start and it turned out exactly as I envisioned (which is rare!).  If you don't know the story or haven't' seen Black Fish, it's a really tragic tale about an orca kept in captivity.  The documentary is definitely worth watching and hopefully my piece makes a little more sense afterwards!

More white slip fun and polka dots!

Another shot of tilikum

Lots and lots of terracotta test tiles

and some glaze testing

Some more fun using the interglaze which you put in between two different glaze types to hopefully get some funky results

I made myself a little paint palette.  
Previously, I was using a cheapo plastic one but a clay version is so much nicer!

A cross inspired by my love of all those beautiful ceramic pieces at the cemetery.  
I realised after making this that I simply can't do those ceramics justice - lesson learned!

A new bowl for peachy which I think lasted a few days before Ben dropped it.  We have concrete floors and they are not forgiving, I dropped my iphone the other week and it instantly went black and never turned back on *sad face*

I made two balls for my tilikum sculpture because I wanted to test different colours and sizes.  I loved them so much that I ended up putting the second one on a pink poodle I made below

I really really love how it turned out

Also 100% digging the underglaze paint kept raw over the terracotta

a shot to see how it looked pre-paint

aerial just for fun!

Some little evil eye pendants

and a fat little dog :P

after the bisque stage

and you can see where I kept some of the raw terracotta showing through

A tile to test out using a little squeezy bottle filled with glaze (not as easy as I thought it would be!)

and some garden markers for my herbs

(Seeing the before photos makes me wonder if I should have painted the words white :P)

Do you have a favourite?

Mine has to be tilikum just because some much love and thought went into him :)