Elephant Beads

Elephant Beads

I have these ready to go into the kiln.  This week has been crazy busy with the ceramic class I'm taking and Hubby is doing some renovation on this old house.  First of all, we are interviewing contractors to have some energy efficient windows installed.  Also, Hubby decided since we are getting new windows that we ought to get a brand new look to the front of our house as well.  So he is planning to knock out this brick wall the elephant beads are positioned against and put up columns instead. I guess he's getting back to his Greek roots.

Speaking of getting back, let me get back to these beads. I hand sculpted each one of them.  They are fun to make and I have tried to make them before without any luck. The first time I made an elephant bead, it was just a fluke.  After that I tried several more times and failed, epically.  This time I went to the dollar store and bought a little plastic elephant and looked at that for several days and tried again.  So these are what I ended up making.  Some are bigger than the others and I do plan to make more. 

I have used a white stoneware and a brown iron stoneware and glazed them in a cone 6 shino glaze. They will go into the electric kiln and be fired to cone 6.

I also wanted to show off this mug I made in ceramics class last week.  I have done this type of sprigging techniques on beads and so I wanted to try this on something functional.  This is going to be a fun mug.  I'm not sure how I want to glaze it yet but I do want to use a glaze that will emphasize the round recessed circles.  I may use a red underglaze that goes to cone 10 inside each circle and then glaze with a transparent cobalt blue (we call it celedon blue in class, but it's really just a transparent cobalt blue). 

On the other hand, I think that I could use a dark cobalt blue underglaze in those circles with the celedon blue and that would be lovely. 

... and this is why I usually just dip my functional ware in clear glaze, it's hard to make glazing decisions!  lol!