Commissioned work!

Over the last year I have had a few orders for commissioned pieces.  Commissioned work always scares me a bit, afraid that what I am seeing and what the customer wants is two different things.  So far in every situation it has been a good thing and usually the item gets added to the studio.  I had a lady order kids plates and she wanted funny animal, so I practiced on my Grand kids and niece.

Rolling with the punches!

My days are filled with joy and disappointments.  I made this beautiful tray, it was 18" x 12", I attached lace impressed detailed clay to make ruffles.  I would show you this beautiful tray but it is in pieces, my shoulder caught it and broke off a chunk.  This morning I was checking the drying pieces and noticed a crack forming on one of my plates.  If I am going to go with the whole punch metaphor thing, then the platter was an all out fight, punches to the gut head and a kick to the knee, the plate was a punch in the arm.  Before pottery, I would paint and make cards, everything turned out every time which is the way I like it!  At the same time, I never ventured very far out of my little box of perfectionism!  I will make the platter again, probably today, well maybe not I am still too raw but when I do, it will be even better then before.  Nothing is for sure with pottery but I do find I am getting better and at some point I won't be afraid to try anything!

My bucket of punches!

First glaze firing in the new kiln!

I love my new kiln!  I was able to program a firing schedule which I got from, Digital fire Insight, this program fires the pottery perfectly!  As apposed, to my previous, hap hazard firings, some over cooked, some under cooked and some just right, lol!
I am writing this as I wait for the temperature to go down on the kiln, it is at 572 F and needs to be below 150 f, before I can open it.  I did however take  a peek and it is looking good!  
Here are a few of the pieces I took out of the kiln.  The colors are rich and beautiful; love this kiln!

Textured slab plates!

My hubby got me this roller for Christmas, it is an "Xiem roller"; it works great.  I did have a bit of a problem with even pressure but once the glaze is on it won't be noticeable.

First, I took a lump of clay and rolled it out to 3/16". To roll out the clay, I used a fondant roller, Walmart sells them in their crafting section, they have guides on either end for thickness. I have seen other people just use a couple a couple thin pieces of wood and a regular rolling pin.  Once you have rolled out the clay you need to compress the clay.  To do this, I used a red rib and went over it twice, evenly, in two different directions on both sides of the clay.

Once you have the texture on the clay, you lay the clay on the mold of your choice, in this case I used a plastic plate from the dollar store.  You need to spray the mold with cooking oil or cover it with Saran Wrap; if you don't do this your clay will stick to the mold.

In this picture, I have laid the clay on the plate. 

I use a needle tool to trim around the plate. Just run the needle against the edge of the plate; I start in the middle on each side and then go either way!

To finish off the edges, use a little roller; I had a brayer in my stamping supplies so I used that and it worked good.  Once the clay has set, you will need to clean up the edges, I like to use a tool that looks like a mini cheese grater, not sure what it is called.

Here is a finished plate, on this plate I used a doily.   Well that was my first tutorial, I hope everything made sense, happy potting!

New kiln!!!!

I am beyond excited! After 14 months of using this relic, I got a new kiln!

To fully understand what this will mean for me, let me explain my firing process with the old kiln.  Every hour I would flip one switch, this took a total of 7 hours.  After 2 hours of firing, I would check the kiln every 15 minutes, this usually took about 2-3 hours.  After that, I would manually, do a cool down, meaning I would flip off all the switches for 15 minutes to drop the temperature then I would flip 4 of the switches back on for 30 min.  So as you can see, on firing days, I could never leave the house.  One of the last times I was firing, I needed to leave the house and couldn't; not a good feeling!  Another issue I had was the temperature differences, the middle of the kiln would get way hotter than, the bottom and top, in some cases this resulted in beautiful pottery but usually it resulted in disasterous ugly blisters!

Here is the new beauty!
With the new kiln I basically push a button and that is it!!!  So now you can see why I am so excited!

Brand spankin new!

When I first started pottery my funds were low, so all the pottery I sold went into supplies and savings! Thanks to all my customers, after the Christmas season, I had more then enough funds for a new kiln!  I am sooooo thankful to all those that have supported this new passion of mine (pottery)! I am excited for what this next year holds! My mind is exploding with all sorts of new ideas!   

The beginning!

I have always wanted to learn pottery.  One of the things that stopped me from learning besides the fact that I don't like to leave the house, was the cost of everything.  I knew that if I took the course I would want all my own stuff, wheel, kiln and everything else that goes with pottery, which is a lot.
 
Within in two weeks of lessons I was hooked and began trying to figure out how I could make pottery in my own home.  My husband was amazingly supportive and every time I said, "well that won't work", he had a solution.  For example my question was, "where would I clean my buckets" because I didn't want to plug up the drains.  So he put in a sink that drains right into the ground.  "Where would I throw" because it is Very messy, he said, "how about the storage room,  we could put all are storage stuff in the old cistern". 

I started looking for used equipment, without much success, so for my birthday my hubby said he would buy me a wheel, which is about $1200. new.  So I was then looking for a used kiln because new they are anywhere from $3000-$20,000.  Not even close to my realm of possibility.

During this time of looking we had a missions conference at our church.  This young man shared a powerful message of giving up everything for Jesus, material possession, home, everything, him and his wife were on their way to Turkey to live as missionaries.  I was so convicted that I just laid on the floor and told God that I lay down my desire for pottery if it wasn't his will for my life.  After the service My husband told me that during worship he saw a picture of a potter forming a jug.  I thought how funny is that, I was laying down my desire and God was showing my husband at the same time a picture of pottery.

So with renewed energy I started looking again.  I phoned a lady that I knew had a kiln for sale even though I knew it was sold.  I thought maybe I could be put on a list in case the other lady backed out.  While talking to her, she told me of a lady that lived close by, that was also selling her kiln.  I gave this lady a call and not only was she selling her kiln, she was selling everything.  2 kilns, wheel, clay, chemicals for mixing glazes, wedging table, lots and lots of wooden bats, seriously everything I needed and more for, drum roll please, $750..  So of course I said we would take it all!

That night we cleaned out the storage room and put everything from the storage room into the cistern.   My husband found two signs in the cistern from the previous owner, God is so funny and amazing, if there was any doubt I was suppose to do this, there wasn't after seeing these signs.

I was in disbelief, no way, this is crazy, who has sign's like that in storage!  There is so much peace when you know you are in the center of God's will.

The lady I bought everything from was so happy that it was going to someone as excited about pottery as she used to be.  She bought everything from a potter that was moving.  At the time she was very pregnant, so didn't get to use anything, turned out her baby had down syndrome so she never did get to use the supplies in the 8 years that she had it.

My husband is amazing!  While I am drinking coffee and writing this post he is painting my new gift store.  Might have a bit to do with the fact that the pottery is taking over the house.  This is my living room, seriously, no room to put the stuff I took out of the kiln last week.

I will post pictures of the gift store when he is finished.  My husband (Todd) is even making me crates out of old pallets to display pottery in.  He is very good to me!

Spiritual insight from a bowl!

I love how I can be making a bowl and at the same time learn something very deep spiritually.  One time in particular, I was making some large bowls out of my reclaimed clay.  I was making large bowls so that I could use up the clay faster.  I hate reclaimed clay, it is so much harder to work with but being a new potter I have a lot of it, it comes from the trimmed off pieces, stuff that doesn't turn out, etc.  Continuing with my story, I was making a large bowl and I could not get the clay centered.  I didn't want to give up, I just wanted to use the clay and be done with it.  So even though I couldn't center the clay I went ahead and made the bowl.  When it came time to raise the walls it was wobbly, so I slowed the speed way down and gradually brought the walls up.  I really didn't think that the bowl would be very pretty but when I trimmed it up I carved a design in it and was quite pleased.  To my surprises when I flipped the bowl over their was a speck of wood stuck in the side of it, no wonder I couldn't get it centered.  Let me back up a little.  I threw the bowl Monday night, Tuesday morning I went to ladies prayer at my church and we prayed about seeing people the way that God sees them, not judging the speck in them but overlooking that and just loving them.   When I flipped the bowl over and saw the speck of I immediately picked it out (oh how I wish I had left it, at the time I did not get the spiritual connection at all).  That night I was visiting with my pastor and he mentioned how someone can do one thing wrong and that's what people remember, they could of had years of good but people see that one bad thing and can't see beyond that.  So I shared with him that we had been praying about that in the morning, (pretty cool).  Still not getting the spiritual connection, I randomly told him about my bowl.  He immediately said, "I think there is a lesson in that", and I said, "NO I like my clay to be perfect, I don't like using reclaimed clay, I like fresh clay straight from the bag"!  I do a lot of thinking while driving and on the way home after saying that I started to put the pieces together, wow!
God delights in using reclaimed clay, that's all he uses, he takes our messed up lives and gently works us together and then starts to form a vessel for His purposes.  He is not concerned about our specks, He just slows the speed down and gently forms us.  I wish I hadn't picked out the speck because it would of just burned up in the fire.  I like people to be perfect and when they are not I quickly without even thinking about it, pick out their speck, in the process hurting them.
The scripture I have been referring to is Matthew 7:3, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"
I need to be more gentle with people because none of us, are without specks or logs.  However it wasn't long after this revelation, that I tried picking out a speck, in someone, Again.  The good thing is I recognized it and hopefully in time, I  will not even see the specks!  Also I am learning to love reclaimed clay, okay maybe love is too strong of a word but like.  When you use reclaimed clay you are literally taking waste and making something useful and often beautiful.  When I use new clay I expect it to turn out, and when it doesn't I am very disappointed.  I get much more delight in a piece when it turns out if it was made from waste.  God picks us up out of the miry clay and sets our feet on a rock, also scripture.  We are the reclaimed clay, I was a mess without Jesus!  I love how he is molding me and shaping me.  I have even gone in the fire a few times and had some specks burned out but that is another story a very painful story, I am sure we could all insert some hard times in here.  Some times I even need to fire a piece of pottery up to 4 times I have heard of people firing 8 times.  The good thing is, we don't need to change other people, God does that and He is so gentle and patient.  We just need to encourage each other in this journey called life, look for the good, see the work in progress.   Each life is precious, which reminds me of a friend of mine.  I had some pottery that was my beginning  pieces and they were, ugly and heavy and destined for the dump.  My friend came over and rescued many pieces because she couldn't stand for them to be thrown away.  The interesting thing is she is a rescuer of people as well, she sees the best in everyone and hopes for them, believes in them, literally lays her life down for them. as does her husband; they are both such an inspiration to me.
Here is the bowl, can't even tell there was ever a speck.