Work station, clay pots and soap dishes. Greenware

My clay working time is now limited to 2 afternoons a week (and anything I can fit in over the weekend)
 My extra day in school has meant that I have to be more efficient with my time now and will probably mean a decline in how much work I can produce for my shops, so I have set all my larger items as "made to order" which I get on with over the course of the week and try to make a few new little things while I have the clay out on the bench.

I have had orders for my bird feeders and whilst waiting for them to dry a bit and work on again I have made these porky little planters.

These ones have an oval opening at the top with an overall oval shape to them and
the ones below are rounded with a rounded opening.

I love making these, they are perfect hand sized and it is good to be free with the clay and stamp
it with hessian, and my other tools. The grit you see on the sides is called "grog" which is ground
fired ceramic grit which will fire into the clay giving it a course texture. I like it.

I made this one last year. It has multiple layers of glaze and
oxide and has had a few firings.

Soap dishes ready for bisque firing.

These ones came from the last long Glaze firing.

Broken Week

Last week was the Mother of all weeks!

So glad its over and a new week has begun. My week began with a car accident on the way home from  picking up my boys from school run. I was hit and shaken about, glass everywhere, the boys and I walked away with not a scratch though. 

So thats all I take away from this experience, the thought of what could have happened to us and just leave it at that.

The car however is wrecked!

My second part of this rubbish week is this irritation!

  I hate this! This is greenware, at the point of
loading into the kiln, one of my textured planters just cracked straight down its joining seem.I think it was just too cold to be putting things into the kiln, everything seemed so much more fragile.After a few more chips and snaps on this particular occasion I retreated to safer pursuits and a few choice words. 

So I waited for a warmer day, got the job done, loaded up the "Big Boy" with loads of
 wall pockets and bird feeders all safe and sound away from my cursed hands!  Fired the same night and next day. Its all gone ok too, nothing broken. 

I will post some pics next timexx

Art Tech Display

This is my latest board in the school. A mood board.
It hangs outside the Art rooms, which was previously bare.

 I have incorporated a Year 11 G.C.S.E students  Art work into my board and also included some scanned pages from the inspirational book by Sibella Court "etc.".

Images and texts are printed onto vellum paper, wallpapers and any scraps of interesting 

papers I could find laying around in the Art rooms.

Some of my favourite pages from "ect."