Wednesday is Clay Day... Part 4

Well, truth be told... pretty much all my days off for the past 2 weeks have been clay days. Which is great, but then other things that you need to do on a daily basis don't get done. You know, thing like running errands, going grocery shopping, cooking a decent meal... those sorts of things. You see, I only have a couple short weeks left until my class ends and when it does, so does my access to the studio. Sooooooo, this is why on any given day, my kitchen table looks like this!

 I was playing around w/ slab work. My very loose template was the vase on the left... but I wanted to make it a little more "flowy," & came up with this~

It has the potential to look quite cool once it's glazed! And do you remember my little bear from "Days off are the Best," many posts ago? 

http://beckypinnick.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

Well, I made another one, though a smaller version~

And I finally got back the original from the other post!

Here he is glazed~ I call him my good energy bear... 'cause he really is chock full of good energy!

:)

And here they are together, so you get the idea of size~

And now back to the Micaceous Clay! Well, those of you who have been following my blog since I was taking classes up in Oregon know that I love to document process, and am rather intrigued by it. But dang it... I forgot to take pictures as I was making this pot! To give you an idea... I'm showing some of the scraping & sanding that goes on to reach the finished product. Pretty exciting stuff, eh?

Here I am scraping the inside of the pot. This one was a lot smaller than my first one, and my first closed form (has a lid) pot ever. Since it was small, I felt the walls should be thin... and in order to get nice thin walls from where I started, a lot of scraping was necessary. This was actually a lot of fun! I sat out on my front porch in the sunshine in my PJ's with an endless cup of coffee... my kinda day! :) Below is the pot after the scraping, but before the sanding.

My feelings about this pot are fairly neutral. I don't absolutely love it, except in an I made it so I gotta love it, kinda way but I don't dislike it either. I do have to say this though, doesn't it kinda remind you of Charlie Brown's head?

Seriously... I didn't mean for it to come out that way, but it is kinda shaped that way, is it not?! Then on to the sanding... will this excitement ever end???

... and more sanding~

And finally, after applying 3 coats of micaceous slip, and hand burnishing w/ stones

(oops! forgot to take pictures of that~ suffice it to say it is a long and lengthy process!)

My finished pot... sparkling in the morning sun!

Whew! That was a lot of work! Now again comes the wait for the firing & the anticipation of whether it will make it through, and how the look will transform if it does. In the meantime, I finally got some glazing done on some cups & bowls I threw on the wheel weeks ago, and I'm concurrently working on 2 more Micaceous Pots... another small closed form & another big one like my first~ but they've just been placed under wraps for now... as I go back to those crazy 10 hour shifts at work. It's funny, 'cause I get tired after 8 hours in the studio... so imagine how I feel after a 10 hour work day! 

Can anyone say "Couch Potato?"

Until next week...

:)