Showing posts with label glaze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glaze. Show all posts

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Thursday

The sun came out this morning after yesterday's chilly, gray, windy, cloudiness.  It felt like we were going backwards to March!  It was a shock and a let down after Tuesday's 80F. complete with swimming.

I put the fish out on the pond rocks a few days ago.  I will probably move them around a bit as summer progresses.  I have to remember to take my camera out with me when I take Winter out in the early morning.  The light is much kinder to pottery at that time!


There have been some questions about how I mix stains into clear.  Below are two examples.  The small one on the left is Mason 6131 Titanium-Iron; the one on the right is Mason 6134 Red-Brown.
My clear is Spectrum 700 which has a light green colorant in it so the glazes have a greenish tinge to them.  I mix entirely by eye.  I want the look of strong tea with milk in it.  I don't generally bother to test  anymore because it always seems to work.  I use this mainly as a liner glaze for teapots and covered jars.


I tried to get a picture of the hummingbirds at the yellow flags.  The blossoms started popping yesterday.  I think the hummingbirds showed up within an hour of the first one to bloom.  The buds really do pop open once they reach a certain stage.  It happens so quickly that you can turn away for seconds and when you turn back you will have an open flower.

NOTE!  Yellow flags are incredibly invasive.  If you do grow them there should not be any access to ponds, streams, rivers etc.  They should be disposed of by drying and composting.  It does no one any favors to discard them into a local waterway.


We've been experimenting with making pizza with a garbanzo (chick pea) flour crust.  It's based on Socca, an Italian flatbread.  We put the toppings on and baked it in the oven.  I think it might be better to pre-cook it for a few minutes before doing the toppings.  Cooking it on the grill should add to the flavor.


Enjoy the day, and as always, thanks for stopping by.........*s*

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Glaze Decoration

I've been doing a lot of glaze decoration this week.  These are tests of a new batch of glaze that I used to use a lot.  Kona-F4 is no longer being mined; Minspar 200 seems to be an acceptable and successful substitutions.  We'll see, grasshopper.....we'll see.  Oh, the glaze is named Andrea Gill's WOM; I got it from Walter Ostrom when I did a workshop with him many years ago.  I size the glaze with super strength hair spray.  It makes the glaze hard enough to work on but I can get the glaze itself to move if I want it to.  The designs are some of the standard ones I use.  When I'm testing a glaze I like to keep the stuff I know as consistent as possible.  

It will be interesting to see how these turn out.  I plan on keeping them for our own use.  They're an oval sandwich size which I find useful for more than sandwiches.






Next I start testing Linda Arbuckles's Majolica.


A first for me:  I am posting this at Mud Colony and Artists in Blogland.  Thanks to Linda for her links which led me there.

It's a sunny low humidity day.....hope everyone else can find a way to enjoy the day .

Thanks for stopping by..............*s*