Shabby Chic Mug

This mug has been through many many firings since my last post!  The first fire was to bisque fire.  Next I coated with a clear glaze and fired again in my small test kiln. The clear glaze crawled horribly.  I do not have the words for the sad emotions that went through me when I picked this up out of the kiln.  I liked the inside. Just not the outside.

I recoated with clear glaze and fired again a cone hotter.  It helped a teeny bit ... but not much.  I decided it was because the manual fire with the kiln setter didn't provide much of a soak. 

I went ahead and (stupid is as stupid does) glazed the others and fired all of them in my big kiln thinking the soak at the end would help.

Nope. I was left with a batch full of scratchy crawly glazed mugs with underglazes that had considerably faded.

I went to the auto store down the street and bought various grades of sanders: 60 grit, 100 grit, 320 grit, and 500 grit. I got to work, using olive oil as a sanding medium to keep the dust out of the air.


It worked!  I ended up with the neatest strange kind of thick satin glaze on all my mugs.  NOTE TO SELF:  Do not use clear glaze on red stoneware with underglazes.That was a lot of sanding!

Ok.Got it.

At last it was time to attach the iron oxide laser decals.  I choose four of my (current) favorite daisy characters.  I refired and when it emerged from the kiln I decided that the zig-zaggy black lines were too dark and overwhelmed the daisy figures. Luckily, I own a large collection of commercial decals and immediately a certain all-over pattern came to mind that would give the entire mug a shabby chic look.  I attached them over the vertical bars and fired again. Voila! It worked.

Here is the result: