Egg pots ready ~ finally!!!

A few months ago I blogged about some little egg pots made at school with the year R's and year 1's. I recently went back to try out dip glazing these egg pots with the children that made them and here they are after the two firings I gave them, one for the bisque firing and the second glaze firing. All their own work I might add and their choice of glaze colours.

Trying out for size with a real egg.

Click here to view more clay class projects for children on this blog.

Stuff to use with clay.............

My mate knows what I like, every year she gets me something special for my Birthday and this year she got me something really special, not jewellery, not a new bag and not perfume,smellies or chocs.
These are tiny Art Deco printing blocks not sure how they were originally used but as the surfaces are made from copper inks would have been used. Such a lovely surprise as I havnt seen any quite as tiny or detailed as these. As you can see I have already tried them out and they are going to be used to pattern tiny tiles.

Here I have printed them onto porcelian clay and I'm going to attach brooch pins once they are fired. The tiny one infront is going to be attached to a ring eventually.

I have always seen these in supplier magazines but have never used one, its a clay gun and comes with a selection of different small disks to create long shaped pieces of clay so good to make long spagetti shaped strands for modelling and such. The children have found it amusing and have made some cute nests from it, that was prior to smearing the clay remains over the furniture.

Meet Alias the Bearded dragon!... new additions to our family.

The beginning of June is always so busy in our house as we have three birthdays in three days, my youngest had his 5th birthday then me and my other son share our birthday, he turned 7. He has been into dinosaurs, bugs lizards ect... ever since I can remember and has asked for pet snakes,spiders and frogs, all of which I had to draw the line at. However these little creatures seem quite adorable.......

and they really are quite special to look at, until......

you consider what they eat!!!!!


Yep
Good job my son likes insects too!!!

The chicken before the egg or the other way round........

This month has been too busy and I've not spent as much time in the workshop making things as I would have liked. Other things have had to take priority so therefore its been a quiet month for new ideas,blogging,making and firing ect....
I did get out in the workshop a few days ago though to clean up a bit and check on the drying out and once a small space was cleared amongst all the junk, unglazed pieces and such I made these.......

Little hand built fat hens, so easy to make with a ball of soft clay, rolled and shaped and little beaks,combs and wattles added.

They are all smooth but I did have the intention of scratching and adding texture to their bodies so that oxide and glaze could be added  before firing them. After going back in today to check them over they have all dried to bone dry stage in such dry warm weather, so they will need to be damped down again to do this. They will make good paper weights once finished or little displays for hen enthusiasts.