So it’s official. The juried show I have been anticipating to hear about has finally spoken and they’ll be accepting vendor applications in June, which I imagine they’ll close registration by July. So, I am like a mad woman. No more time for playing, and experimenting. It’s what they call, “Go time.”
I made one more stop over at Dave and Jim’s barn to pick up some needed molds I was missing for my collection. That was mostly a mission accomplished. I failed to find any mug, or decent cup molds in their collection. I picked one mold up that I thought was the one. It was a perfect sized mug, but I turned it around and to my disgust rather than surprise, an eagle. Oh, I didn’t escape unscathed from the hoakie eagle molds. I have some wall plaque thing that was in my shelf of products.
I did acquire a bunch of pitchers, and it looked like a group of multi sized kitchen canisters (IE: Flour, sugar, tea, etc). So, I guess what I have will suffice. I won’t be making anymore trips out to New Albany, but man, what a good deal that was. I was starting to think that ceramics was becoming an overly expensive hobby.
Oh yeah, we found this giant KOI fish mold. It’s pretty insane. Paul’s pretty excited about it, and I’m just excited about the fact that I’ll never have to buy dishes, or flower pots ever again.
Anyways, on to the fun stuff…
I had Paul pick up some porcelain slip this weekend, which I was expecting it to be much more different from the stoneware slip I have grown accustomed, too, but I actually like the porcelain more. It poured smoother, and was less gritty and clumpy. I also had Paul pick up some ceramic stain they had a sell on, although it wasn’t the shade of green pigment I wanted, it’ll do for the time being. I went ahead an added some of it to the porcelain slip.
The disaster struck as to be expected. After casting one of the coffee pot molds, which I thought was banded tightly, the mold separated and green slip oozed out onto the table, then on the floor. (Sorry Karen!!!) However, we cleaned it up, I saved some of the slip, and was able to at least cast this smaller two handled dish, the matching lid for it, and a smaller dish, which Paul fudged up after trimming some excess off the leather hard piece.
So there was one piece to rule them all, which got stenciled with a pinup.
By the way, I have created a logo stencil. Isn’t it cute!? It looks like Abby!
Earlier this week, I attempted using the wheel again in which, I made this piece, attempted another, failed, and threw a tantrum and quit. The wheel is not my forte... obviously.
On Sunday, we cast a few more pieces in plain porcelain, which I’ll check on today, and hopefully, I’ll have a large enough load to kiln before the week is up. I still have a few more stencils I have been dying to try.
This week will be filled with me make a lot of slab built stoneware mugs, since I didn’t find my hand-dandy mold, but all is good. I can boast, that I make a mean stoneware slab built mug, and after all of this excitement of casting, stenciling, and kilning is over, then comes the glazing, and I am SOOO dreading that. *tear*
