More Plates. All the Plates!

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So apparently the theme of this session is plates. I didn't mean for that initially, but it's turned out to be a great platform for all these different decoration techniques.

On Saturday, I got a dragon egg and two plates smoothed and ready to be decorated. These are all made with 412/stoney white cone 10 clay.
The dragon egg I'll be decorating tonight via the surface erosion technique, where you paint on a resist and then sponge away material, leaving the painted parts raised above the rest of the surface. I'll be using an acrylic medium, not shellac like in that link, as I won't be doing anything nearly that complicated.

The plates though I was actually able to decorate on Saturday. For the first, I used an embossing tool to trace a design of Betty White. I'm hoping it looks like her, anyway. I'll use an oxide wash that's wiped off to highlight the carved in design.

For the second plate, I used the "mocha diffusion" technique which has been floating around the interwebs. It was AMAZING and worked just like the videos we saw online. Our teacher mixed up a batch of special slip which was basic, and then we just added apple cider vinegar to various oxide mixtures. The pieces had to be leather hard, and not overly dry, because the process depends on the slip still being quite wet when the oxide mixture is applied. You just apply the slip to the piece, drip some of the oxide mixture on, and poof, there's a chemical reaction that creates these amazing organic designs. I've included a video we took of the process, plus a pic of my final design. We'll see how it looks once it's fired!



Finally, in about the last 10 minutes of class, I threw together this fairy house for my garden out of scraps of red raku clay. I think it'll go nicely with the mushroom from last time.

Tonight will be the last night for wet clay. I have another plate mostly done, which will be fired plain and undecorated; I'm going to use the bubble glazing technique for that so it doesn't need any other decorations. We'll also be doing a raku firing, so my fairy house, mushroom, and box should be done tonight! I haven't glazed any of them yet as they weren't yet bisqued on Saturday, so that will take a lot of my time tonight, probably. As previously mentioned I'll also finish up the dragon egg, and then if I have time I'm going to make salt and pepper shakers. In the shape of an ankylosaurus. One will be the head and the other will be the tail. Awesome, amirite? Hopefully I'll have time, because this is IT! Glaze day fast approacheth!

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