School Tile Update

Gardening Club ceramics tiles
A few blog posts ago I mentioned a project that I did with the schools gardening club, you can review it here.

Well, after storing them in my garage over the summer I finally got them into the kiln a couple of weeks ago, and this is the final glaze firing for the tiles. They have glazed really well and I'm so glad I took the decision to only let them glaze the letters just one colour (much to the children's annoyance at the time) I didn't want to control how they used the colours but just felt that the letters would be lost in a mix of glaze colours if I hadn't.

The children collected leaves, twigs and other garden objects and imprinted them into the tiles.

The tiles need to be mounted onto a wooden sign now ready to be placed in the school garden. I will post more pictures when this is done.

Making with porcelain clay (porcelain Owl Buttons)

Here are some photos of the owl buttons I have been making for my shop on Not on the high street.com since last year, I have started making them in batches like these, so I can keep better hold on how many I have.

These are the buttons that have just been made so they are still soft at this stage.
Once fired I coat half of them in the teal glaze  or the moss green glaze you see below.

The white buttons are left unglazed, the others either have a teal glaze or a moss
green colour fired onto them.

Garden cane Toppers, A mini production line.

Mini production lines in my workshop.
These cane Toppers fit onto bamboo canes through the base and can be used in the garden to decorate tomato and sweet pea canes aswell as preventing you from stabbing your eyes on the tops when pricking out side shoots.

These are the cane toppers ready for drying straight after being made.

These are at green stage and have been made using a cast of a hand built egg I made using Indian print blocks to decorate the surface.

And at fired and packaged stage.

These are the cane toppers after firing.

I also make little bird toppers like these.

I make the little cotton drawstring bags and print onto cotton to package these items. Then they are ready to send now.

Wells. Inspiration

My little trip to "Wells next to sea" this week. I love Wells and always find nice things there and have lots of good memories from there as a child, now my children come with me and love it just as much. Here are some of the things I brought back this time (bought and found)

A selection of bought and found objects, sea urchins,star fish, driftwood and stones ect..

I am going to find a climbling plant to grow through this aged rusted crown

These giant barnacles are stunning I found them in a lovely shop there I was so inspired by them Im going to make some from porcelain.

See my 2013 photos from Wells next to sea.

School Project. Clay Letter Tiles

Last term I worked with another parent from school and we organised and after school Wildlife & Gardening club which involved 15 children from reception year to year 6.
We made wildlife feeders, planted seeds, made twig sculptures, all sorts of activities were organised each week for the children to do. I had been thinking about getting them to make something from clay, perhaps some cane toppers or something like that. However, the other parent suggested making some kind of tile to have permanently in our school garden.
Well after considering what we could do. I decided that each child should make one letter to form a set of 16 tiles that will eventually appear in the school garden.

Each child had a 4" x 4" square tile and they set about finding leaves and twigs to roll onto the clay surface. (the leaves leave a faint outline of the leaf veins onto the clay, really beautiful) Then they formed a large letter on top of the tile and continued to add interest to the tile and make it their own.

Here are the tiles laid out on my workshop table (all but the U which came later and didnt make the first firing in time)
I have been back to school and a few of the older children from the club have since glazed the surfaces of the tiles, and all are awaiting the second firing.
  See the results of the second firing here