Wedding Favour Ceramic Hearts

Its good to know love is in the air and people are planning their special day. Some go the extra mile and give lots of attention to detail.
These two commissions came in on the same evening, I gave a quote for the numbers and after a few exchanged emails I got both of the commissions!!
I feel so happy to be involved in making someones wedding day a little bit more special.

All these hearts are drying out slowly due to the bad weather. Next week they will be glazed and fired

Lace impressed hearts in a larger size.
 I have made 120 of these so my work space is overrun with hearts right now.

Each heart will be threaded with ivory and champagne coloured ribbons to match their wedding theme colours.

The smaller hearts will be glazed with a poppy red glaze and copper centre.
 I have made 40 of these.

Winter Snow and warm Kiln Loads

This is what I woke up to on Tuesday!

View from my bedroom window.

and this is what I woke up to today!

So my week has been a series of checking for three school closures (fairly inconsistent there) so

I may have done school run to one school but not another, & the school where I work is on the coast 

so it didn't snow there until today, but we had a class trip to the National Portrait Gallery to London

which was cancelled on the day.

So, I fired my kiln and got going with some orders and a large commissioned order for a shop in Swansea. I fired the little kiln and as the temperature was -6 it cooled pretty quick so I could retrieve all the work within 24hrs, well that's never happened before! 

I have made a selection of lace embedded porcelain hearts, some 

vintage key hearts and the larger fairy hearts. 

All have been sent off to their new owner now.

Also warm from the kiln are these little porcelain disc pins, they are teeny tiny measuring just 2cm with a 15mm pin.

Refining Tutorial. Porcelain Heart wedding favours

I have recently made 50 porcelain hearts that have been impressed with vintage lace for a lady who commissioned me to make them for wedding favours.
Here is the guide to the way I made them from the cutting out stage.

First of all I cut out the hearts with a cookie cutter and impressed half of them with lace over the whole of the heart.
 Then I impressed the other half with a thicker cotton lace over just half of the hearts, leaving one side smooth.

When the hearts are at leather dry stage as they are here in the photo above I begin to refine them. I remove all the rough edges and the burrs so I have a smooth heart.
(Leather hard stage means when the clay is firm but not too wet to work with and not so dry you cannot do anything with it and is more likely to break.) 

I also work on the reverse side so that they are smooth all around. 
I use the flat side of a knife to do this and I work all the way around taking off the side of the heart.

The next stage is probably the most time consuming which is smoothing all the hearts. I use a sponge and go along all the edges and then wipe over the front just gently. I also sponge the hanging hole so this is smooth as I don't want to damage the ribbon that I thread through with rough edges.

Here are two of the hearts ready.

After they have all been smoothed I am left with these clay filings, which I recycle as porcelain is so expensive and I don't like to throw any away unnecessarily. It just gets put back in a bag and I do a big recycle when the bag is full at another time.

I leave all the hearts stacked on top of each other to dry out in my workshop.

When they are all dry I check them all for warping, if they are good they go in the kiln, if not they go in the recycling bag as if they warp before firing they will warp more during the firing.

After firing I add the ribbons and they look like this.
*
Find them in my shop here.

Terracotta commissions.............Exterior plant pockets

Its been ages since I have made anything from terracotta clay, I've had two bags stored under my work table for so long that it took a bit of working and preparing before I made these two plant pockets, one is a commission for a lady and the other I have made "just in case"........ (just in case it gets damaged or doesn't make the firing process) as in my experience terracotta clay tends to be more problematic with cracking ect.. than my other clays. If they both survive it will get put on a stall.



I am working from a picture of a similar planter I made a few years ago from stoneware.




These planters just need a hole near the top to hang on the wall, but the clay it too soft right now, it will need to be dry enough to handle and pick up. After they will be left to dry out slowly and then fired in the kiln.




This is my seal,
 I stamp this on larger exterior pieces of work.