Out of the kiln!

Today I opened my kiln and have lots of new things.
 I love these though because they are made by two of my children. They made these things a while ago but they wanted to slop some glaze about, so they did.

Noah's Knee Pot

Formed around his little knee and given three supporting feet. 

Molly's Fox.
She wanted to have a go at making some animal heads herself.
I prefer hers to mine! Perhaps I will ditch my own glazing efforts and get her to  do it instead!

Glaze Samples and not so happy accidents

A little while back I got hold of some new watercolour glazes which can be used on the clay and over glazed with a clear glaze to create a watercolour appearance.
 The tester pieces came out as expected but I used them on my fox hooks and I'm not too keen on the look of them so they are going back in the kiln for a third firing with some extra coats of glaze.

These are the Amaco glaze samples fired on

And at the stage of painting them onto the bisque fox hooks.

I feel a bit let down really as  I thought the colours would be softer and I'm annoyed at myself for doing them all at the same time without really knowing the end result. (not that you really know what you're going to get when you open the kiln when trying new glazes)

Mmmm not v happy when I opened the kiln and saw these.

Unfortunately this project will just fade into the background for a while so I can concentrate on other work, I will post back when Ive given them another firing and see how they come out next time.

Sorry to end on a bit of a negative but as I had got such positive reponses to the hooks in the original post, I thought it fair to follow up with what happened to them. 

 Well its all part of the making process I suppose. 

Live & Learn!!

Moo Cards... They really are quite good!!!

I'm not one to pass up a good opportunity and took advantage of the free Moo cards through Folksy. 50 Free cards with the photos of your choice on the reverse side and the design of your choice on the front. You could even choose a different photo for each card if you wanted, what a great offer! 
The quality is unbeatable so now I have some professional looking cards instead of my own "handmade ones" which were ok but nowhere near as crisp as these from Moo. Another reason to go with them again is their flexible designs and layout of the card. My web address's are quite long so the lettering always looked a bit squashed but it wasn't a problem at all when I made them with Moo. The choice of different card stock was a bonus too. I would definitely recommend them.

This is how they arrived.

Here are the photographs that I selected of my work to go on  the reverse side and the
wording on the front side.