Glaze Making ...

I have a glaze recipe that I worked with at the college lab a semester or two ago. It is a once fire recipe that goes to Cone 1, clear glossy.   I made up a small batch of that today for some sprig beads that I will be firing tomorrow.  Right now I'm waiting for some mugs to dry so I can bisque fire them in the big kiln. The beads, however, will be fired in the smaller kiln.

The first thing when mixing glazes is to always always wear a mask. Here's a disposable mask (N95) that works quite well. I use this type for mixing up small batches (scroll down).

The next thing I use is a gram scale, which I bought at a local ceramic's company. It also measures in ounces as well as something called 'n'. I keep thinking I ought to google that someday... someday.

Glaze recipes are written out in grams. The great thing about that is that if you want a big batch, just add a zero to the end. I was confused about the process of glaze recipes for a long time. For example, when cooking first the garlic and onions are sauteed, the meat added, some spices ... allow time to cook ... add veggies, perhaps some more spices ...allow time to cook ... etc ....

With glaze recipes, you just dump it all together, stir it up, and add in the colorants and water last ... or you can dump it into a small amount of water and add more water later. It is no wonder when looking at glaze recipes I was so confused. I was looking for "add this, stir, add that, let sit ...."   That sort of thing doesn't happen with glazes. Okay ... enough laughing. I do tend to over think some things. ha ha!

In any event, today I mixed up a cone 1 glaze.  Here's the recipe ...


CLEAR GLOSS, Cone 1, Once Fire
feldspar 3134: 61.0
kaolin : 20.5
ball clay : 18.5
add cmc : (1/2 tsp)

Feldspar is mineral composed largely of a linked chain of silica, aluminum, and oxygen elements. Along with quartz, it is the most common mineral on the continents. The word means "field crystal." It is ground up crystal that melts nicely. Kaolin is a white clay, very pure, used in porcelain and ball clay is a type of clay that is very plastic and pliable. It, along with the kaolin, will help the melted feldspar fit the clay. The CMC thickens the glaze so that I can apply it with a brush.

I could add colorants at this point, like rutile or cobalt/copper carbonate and perhaps I will end up doing that later, but right now I'm just after a nice clear glaze to coat some of the white porcelain sprig beads like the one at the beginning of this post. These will be fired at a higher temperature but the look will be about the same.

My Camera

My father has done much to encourage me in my art endeavors.  He bought me my first pottery wheel and my kiln. Really ....does it get better than that?  Yes, it does!  He also taught me how to string beads using wire and crimp beads, which led to me making ceramic beads. He passed on his incredible camera when he bought a new one. The list goes on and on .... 

During his visit a couple of weeks ago he brought some beautiful cactus photos with him and explained in detail the steps he uses to make them really pop out.  I have never used the 'sharpen' feature of Picasa, or any other of them for that matter, but he patiently went through photo after photo, demonstrating which function to use and how much to slide it to the left or the right.  At first I didn't see much difference.  Then, I started to understand.  By the time he finished, I had a much better understanding of how Picasa worked in general.  You can make a small change and not see much of a difference, but if you do about 4 or 5 small things, then undo them to look at the original photo, there is a huge difference. 

The camera my father gave me is a Nikon Coolpix 4500.  The best thing about this camera is that the camera lens can swivel and it is easy to capture any angle, which makes for great perspectives especially with the macro feature.  To my untrained eyes, the photos always looked sharp enough.  However, after he demonstrated on some of his own photos, moving that sharpen slider over to the right makes a wow difference.

I also tried the glow option for brightness.   The glow option is about equal to the brighten option in PaintShop Pro.  The problem with the glow is that it also gives the photos an intensity that they do not possess, but lowering the saturation tones that back to normal.  The added bonus is that with the lighting setup (see previous blog article), I don't seem to need the contrast option I previously used in Gimp.  The goal is to have an accurate photo which is pleasing to the eye.

Cropping is the last thing I do before exporting (copying) the pictures to a file folder to be uploaded to either Flickr or an Etsy listing.  Cropping pictures to be used on Etsy is an art all to itself.  The site advises a photo of about 1000 pixels wide.

However, if the object this is being photographed has equal negative space on all four sides, it won't show well in the gallery view.  There has to be more negative space on the top and the bottom than on the sides.  Therefore, the image has to be in the middle. This goes against the first rule of photography that anything can be in the middle. However, if you think about it, offseting the image to one side (left or right), and/or using the negative space in thirds (less on top and bottom than in the middle) will still allow for the basic rules to be followed.


I will not say my photos are up to the level of a professional photographer, but they are better than they were a couple of weeks ago and I'm grateful for that.  THANKS DAD!  THANKS ETSY TEAMS!

I'm hoping that if someone else is struggling that these tips will help a bit, and if you have conquered your photo taking/processing skills and have more to share (or correct), please do.  Thanks!

Lighting Lighting Lighting

This is my current lighting setup.  Two hardware lights and a lamp, all equipped with sunlight bulbs.  I covered the openings of the two hardware lamps with photocopier paper (two sheets per lamp) and taped two sheets around the lamp to diffuse the light and eliminate glare spots.

I laid more photocopier paper on the bottom.  That is what the beads will sit upon as they are being photographed. For pottery I will move the lamps slightly back and use graduated background paper I recently purchased from B&H Photo..

This is probably about as inexpensive as it can get.  I have struggled with lighting and photography for as long as I have had my two Etsy stores.  I think taking pictures it is just as hard (or harder) than creating beads and pottery.

That's where being a member of a team on Etsy is so amazing.  I am a member of two teams, The Etsy Mud Team and the Beads Of Clay team.  All the members are incredibly helpful.   Most have photography down to a fine art and are extremely willing to look at other's setups and make helpful suggestions.  The mentoring is fantastic! They have helped me through some really bad photo setups. Looking through my first sales in my shops, it is easy to see where I started.  It's difficult to train the eye as to what is a good photo from a bad photo when you are not sure what a good photo is supposed to look like.  I have been looking in design magazines to get a better idea and I have realized that the photos I've taken the last couple of years are nice and bright, but the lighting is harsh and glaring.  The goal is to take a picture that accurately represents the item, but make it pleasing to the eye.  That leads to lots of questions.  Is it better to take photos inside or outside?  How much lighting is too much and how little is too little?  How should a shot be framed/cropped?  How important is perspective?  What is a good graphic's program? What is a good camera?  Flash? No flash?  First things first: lighting.

For myself, I have had to decide whether or not I want to take photos inside or outside.  I would prefer to take photos outside, but it can be cloudy for days on end in the winter. In the summer, I don't have proper shade.  It would take just as long to set up and take down outside as it would inside.  Plus, I seem to have the same problem with glare outside as I do inside (Example: Third photo on my blog post here). 


And after the picture is taken, it must be processed. In the past, I have utilized many programs for processing the photos.  I have a very old edition of Paintshop Pro.  I have installed Gimp (freeware) as well as Picasa (freeware). For a while I was importing the photos with Picasa, processing the cropping and brightness with Paintshop Pro, then adjusting the contrast with Gimp.  Currently I'm using Picasa exclusively.  My next article will be about that. 

Frost Porcelain with Rhinestones

This is some Frost porcelain clay from Laguna.  It is extremely white, not at all vanilla creamy.

Each bead was pierced with several holes to allow for these 4 mm Swarovski light blue sapphire pointy back rhinestones.

I will be adding more photos of these into flickr over the next few days.

Backyard Raku Beads

I finally got brave enough to raku in my backyard. It took a good while to get the beads wired into their containers, but once they were I was able to load them into the kiln.  I had wanted to use a smaller kiln. However, some of the lights are out on the digital readout and I could not figure out what information I was punching into the mini-computer.  That plan was abandoned.

The other small kiln was loaded with beads and already firing, therefore that possibility was out as well.  I was nursing the raku bug and I was itching to get started. I decided to use my bigger kiln.  The lid is heavy but it normally leans against the aluminum siding of our house when I'm loading.

I figured the lid would be okay propped the same way whilst I was pulling out the raku. I checked with my husband and he said it would be fine.

I put a 04 cone into the kiln sitter and placed shelves up as high as I needed so pulling would be easier.  I loaded the kiln with my two homemade raku 'bead' containers and plugged the extension cord into the electrical socket.  I turned the knobs onto medium and let it go for about an hour, then turned both knobs on to high.

I don't have a pyrometer so I was checking the atmosphere via the peekholes. After two and a half hours, the inside of the kiln was a dull red so I lifted the lid and peeked. The glaze on the beads was bright green, not shiny at all. I continued with the firing.

I sat outside wondering if it would have to reach cone 04 before the cone bent and the kiln sitter shut it off. 

I noticed at college that the beads always took a bit longer than the rest of the pots.  I am guessing that   because the beads are in containers, the atmosphere has to really penetrate inside the container.

I waited, impatiently.  The butterflies were out and I snapped a picture of this one. The other one got away.  It was a dark oche yellow with bright yellow  and black spots. 

It was hard to get this picture because the butterfly kept its wings shut most of the time, only fluttering them open briefly. By the time the camera would focus, the wings would be shut again.  Capturing this photo of the butterfly was about the same level of frustration as waiting for the kiln to get to temp.

The next time I peeked into the peep holes, the dark red was noticeably brighter, but it was still a deep red. I put on the glasses, slipped on the gloves, lifted the lid and even with the welding glasses could tell the glaze was shiny. My husband was outside with me and he held the trashcan lid as I pulled both the canister and the box. I must have been squeezing the box too hard with the tongs because on the way to the trashcan, it broke.  It all made it into the trashcan, the newspaper caught on fire, and John closed the lid.

We went inside to eat supper, and after the dishes were washed, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. After they were in the oven I went outside and took these off the rods/wires. The beads are fired on stainless steel rods, very thin which I buy at the welding store for about $7 a pound. They come in three foot lengths and can be snipped with a simple wire cutter.

I do not think I will fire in that big kiln again unless someone else is pulling. It's just too hot (approx. 2000 degrees). I can see why raku is addicting because instead of having to wait overnight or two days for the kiln to cool off, the results of the firing are almost immediate, and of course, the metallic and cool color variations that comes with the reduction in the trashcan is exciting.

Backyard Clay

I have gardened many years and many times scraped mud off my shoes, amazed at its tenacity to cling to the bottoms, but the other day was the first day I thought to squish and roll it up in my hands.

I suppose its because I read Marsha Hedrick's account of the wild clay she's been harvesting near her house that nudged me to try this. I pierced this, left it to dry, and bisque fired it. This is how it came out of the kiln. It probably is low fire, but I'm going to try to fire it to cone 6 and see how it does. It was pitch black when it was wet. But it is reddish brown now. I'll coat with a clear gloss glaze and see how it does.

Sunlight Photography

Last week I ordered new  photography background paper.  It came yesterday and I set it up and took a few photos.  The light setup I have is good in some ways, awful in others.  I have sunlight bulbs in the lamps, however, they shine something fierce on the pots and make them appear to have eyes (click here to see what I mean.)    I got some excellent advice from the Etsy Mud Team about what to do about that glare and this weekend I am going to try to find some frosted acrylic flexible sheets.  However, I thought I would take the paper and a few items outside and play with natural light. 


On my back porch there is quite a bit of shade, so I quickly set the paper out and weighed it down so it would not blow away and started taking photos.  I started out with some beads. I usually place these under plain white paper or on the cement itself, but I thought I would see how they look on top of the photo paper.

This is a pot I threw near the middle of the semester of ceramics.  Throwing bigger requires considerably more hand dexterity. I had trouble keeping my hands matched together on the inside and outside of the pot.  One hand invariably would travel a bit more horizontally past the other and create this lopsided look.

Also this semester, I experimented with a variety of dips.  This has three dips on it.  First I dipped a third of it into a High Iron Shino, next I dipped another third into Ginny's Rutile, and the last third I dipped into a glaze our studio calls Rob's Green.  It makes for six different glazes combinations, over and under.  Of course, with all shinos, it is best to always put them under everything else.  I have learned this the hard way.

When I looked at this last photo of this pot, I was a bit taken aback at the side shadow that appeared.  I did not use a flash.  I suppose the sun must have peeked out of the clouds and caused this side shadow.  These two photos were snapped no more than a minute apart  under the same exact light conditions.  I suppose even outside poses its own set of problems.

This particular pot was glazed with an Iron Shino glaze for the first dip, and then I dipped the top into a red Peach Bloom glaze and let it run.

One of the long time potters in my ceramics class has been after me to work on my rims when I am throwing them on the wheel.  She knows that by the time I get to the top of the pot I am tired and just want to be done with it.  So this is the pot I decided to really work on the rim a bit more.  It is easy to see the difference between this pot and the pot directly above. Thank you, Linda!!! :)

I could work on the pots at home, by myself, alone, in my studio and perhaps eventually muddle my way through entire processes.  It is wonderful, however, to work in a ceramics studio near other potters who will force me to take a good hard look at what I'm doing and who push me to not get lazy with the clay.   I can't say enough nice things about the folks I have met in pottery class. They're the best!   I learned a lot this semester! I hope to take again in the fall.

Showcasing a Creative Beader

I think this necklace created by Erika is simply amazing.  She beads jewelry for the sheer love of beading.  However, if she were ever to break out and begin selling it, she could certainly begin with this piece.  Erika individually wired a variety of ceramic art beads and combined them all into this wonderful necklace.

I especially love the jeans material draped under the necklace because that's how I would wear this necklace, casual blouse with jeans.  Definitely click through and view the photo bigger.

Included in this necklace are ceramic art beads from Mary Ann Carroll of Artisian Beads Plus and Ingrid of PotteryGirl1.

Raku Beads

These beads were some that I was able to raku before the ceramics semester ended.  I am going to try to raku here at home, but I say that all the time and somehow I never get around to doing it.

These have a lovely luster on them, and while they reduced a bit, they did not reduce as much as a different batch. I will take a photo of those later.

New Stuff

 I have been applying low fire glazes under the iron oxide decal transfers the last week or so and I could just kick myself because I think I already knew that the iron oxide transfers get absorbed by the low fire glazes ... sometimes.  Other times they work just fine and dandy.  But I forgot because I have been busy at school all semester and I don't review my past firing notes near as often as I should.

Porcelain Cement?

These are some cone 10 porcelain nuggets, unglazed.  The type of porcelain one buys definitely determines the whiteness and translucence of the porcelain.  This particular porcelain probably should be marketed as stoneware, though it is soft and yummy to the touch, much like porcelain.

After these came out of the kiln, I was left wondering: is there such a thing as porcelain cement?  These remind me of the white crystal landscaping stones used in flowerbeds.  I didn't consider it necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Also fired with these beads were some others which I decided to tint with a darker gray and fire with a clear gloss to see what that might look like.  

I am intrigued by the flow of these beads.  The gloss glaze brought out facets that surprised me. I was not expecting to like these so much.  Currently I am waiting for some Swarovski Crystals (rhinestones) to come in the mail so I can add these to the waiting holes.  I'm thinking bright colors for contrast. I'm going to try a few sparkly clear ones to see how they look too, though.


 UPDATE: to see how these look finished, here is a photo I uploaded to flickr.

Monkey Pendant

Every two years (or longer) the Instar decal salesman makes his way to American Ceramics.  Every so often he has a special suitcase filled with out of print decals, sometimes they are very old.  This particular decal was in that batch.  So I grabbed the last sheet.  There are a few others on that same sheet, an adorable blue elephant and a red rooster, too. 

After I got home, I immediately wedged some clay and rolled it out to make some pendants.  I normally am a fan of round (square, ect ...) beads, but I could not see how to fit this size onto a round bead.  So I made a few pendants.

I still have some pendants to glaze, and those will be glazed with a smooth glossy clear. This batch, however, was glazed with a white matte glaze.

Stoneware Tumbler with Sprigs

Several months ago I threw a series of small tumblers/tea bowls from this wonderful stoneware Toas Red clay from Texas Pottery Supply.  I brushed white slip on the outside, and added sprigs of clay to form this flower.

Then they sat on my greenware shelf for quite a while. Finally I bisque fired them and they sat even longer. I've been busy with college and haven't found time to glaze and fire them until this past weekend. 

This is one from that batch.  There is twinge of purplish/pink tint to this red stoneware clay that left me quite surprised. I have the other two over on the Flickr account.

Raku-ing Beads in a Cylindrical Container

Here is the ceramic stoneware cylinder ready to go into the kiln. It is cone 10 stoneware which has been bisque fired to cone 04.  It's been through the raku process before which is why it is black.

 There are approximately 20 beads in there.  Notice that the stainless steel rods are bent between each bead as well as near the cylinder's holes. This is to keep the beads from bumping into each other and fusing together.


The raku process goes like this: put cylinder (or pot) into kiln. Heat to approx. 1885 degrees (cone 06), open, take out cylinder (or pot) using tongs. Place this into a trash can with some sort of combustible medium (such as sawdust or newspaper).

Let it cool down  for a half hour or so, open and be amazed.

OR.....

If the lid has been pressed down tightly, sometimes the lid can be briefly opened to let in some air.  This will allow the newspaper re-catch on fire.  Closing the lid, and repeating this process can make for some beautiful effects.  It is the process of reducing and/or eliminating the oxygen in the trash can which makes for gorgeous coloration, especially if there is some amount of copper in the glaze.

Here is a side view of the container. I bent the wires on the outside so that they would be more stable.  I'm sure there are easier ways to go about this, but this is what I have done thus far.
 

Raku Beads

College has kept me very busy.  I'm about halfway done with this semester.  In ceramics we have been rakuing every week, weather permitting.  I have been wanting to raku beads for so very long but trying to figure out a contraption to fire them in has stood in my way.

Finally I made a ceramic box, sans lid, and poked holes through each side.  I liked that, but it was hard to pull out of the kiln, being rectangular shaped and all.

I decided to throw a stoneware canister  and poked holes through the sides.  It ended up being about 8" tall after being bisque fired, and wide enough to fit three 20mm beads. Each holds about the same amount of beads (20 or so).  I have decided I prefer the canister to raku the beads inside.  I think the tall sides aid in the reduction process.