New Class offered

I will be offering a New Clay Class on Tuesdays from 3:20-4:35 after Winter Break.
Currently I have a few spaces left in my Monday class at the same time that will be filled on a first come first serve basis.
If you are interested in any of my classes please let me know Via E-mail.
heidileagarner@hotmail.com
I need to have at least 3 kids in each class to keep them running.
There is a Max class size of 6 kids per class.
Price per class is $10.55 (which includes a materials fee)
Please pass on this info to anybody you think might be interested.

First Glaze Fire

Here is a little box of treasures going home with one of our students. You can see how brill ant all of the work looks once it has gone through the glaze firring. These pieces were glazed with an underglaze when they were still greenware and then bisque fired. They were then glazed with a clear glaze and glaze fired. The clear glaze gave them the great shine.
This week we will be glazing a lot of work. Some of the glazing will include clear glaze on underglazed pieces but the majority of the work will be glazed using regular glazes. It will be a unique experience for the students. When using the underglazes the students could simply pick up a red bottle of glaze and be confident that their finished piece of work will have a red glaze on it. When using the glaze for bisque ware they will have to actually read the lable and look at the test tiles. Our clear glaze actually looks light blue in the bottle and the color "exotic blue" looks pale pink before it is fired. This is a great way to understand the science behind clay and glazes and what happens to materials when they are placed in a very hot oxidation atmospher.

Nativity Tiles

Here is a picture of the girls working on Nativity Tiles. I did not show any Detailed photos of Student work, as some of them are going to be Christmas gifts, and I don't want to ruin the surprise. I will post finished work after Christmas.

Test Trial.

While looking at one of my favorite clay blogs
(ok, i don't really have a lot that I look at)
I noticed a really neat technique for decorating the surface of clay.
You can see it here.
I have worked with masking out areas to create a glaze pattern, and I've used wax resists. I have never used paper stencils and was curious as to how she got them to stick.
I contacted the artist and had a correspondence with her about the technique she used.
She created her patterns using a newsprint stencil and a thick slip.
She applied the newsprint "snowflakes" to leather hard ware and then sprayed it with water so it would stick to the surface. She then smoothed it out and applied a thick slip.

I thought I'd try it using under glaze.
Under glaze is supposed to be applied to green ware, but for this project our time restrictions would necessitate application to clay that was just rolled. Because this is not a normal practice I decided I'd do a trial run.

I also tried the technique using slip from our white clay applied to the terra cotta clay that we will be using for the ornaments.
Different clays shrink at different rates, so of course I needed to do a test run and see if the slip would stay on our terra cotta as it went through the process.
I did the test bisque fire and we will see how it turns out.

If all goes well, this will be our project for next week.

Naturally Jakie wanted to help out, so I found something to do so that he could be both "helpful" and occupied.

Slab Houses

Here is a village of our little luminary houses.
I allowed them to dry (safely away from the hands of little Jakie).
These houses were made using our favorite slab method. Because the clay had to be close to leather hard to assemble the houses, I rolled and cut the pieces for the students. The kids designed the decor of the rest of their homes.
They finished their stamping and cutting just in time for class to end.
I was able to assemble the houses before they got too dry.

Prep Work

Sometimes I need to do some behind the scenes work to prepare for the classes. On Monday we will be making luminary houses. These will make great Christmas decor or gifts. Our clay needs to be a little closer to "leather hard" (ask you kids what this means- hopefully they remember). The stiffer clay will make it easier to assemble the houses. Basically they will have a "house kit" They will do all of the assembly and decorating and they will have to cut their own roof and form the base... so they will be putting a lot of individual work- and they won't have to ROLL OUT CLAY (which i think is not a favorite activity).

I also prepared some test tiles for our glazes. Glazes look different after they have been fired, so after these tiles have been glazed and fired, the kids will know what to expect when they glaze their work.

Angels

Last week we made Angles. UnfortunatelyI do not have a picture of student work, but they look similar to this angel. This is yet another slab project.

photo from Stuido Elan.

underglaze

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We worked for 2 weeks applying underlgazes to our finished work. Underglaze can be applied to greenware (work that is dry but had not been fired) or bisque ware. Once it has been fired it needs to be fired an additional time with a clear coat. Then they will be complete.

Castles

Slab is a wonderful technique for hand building that we will use a lot. This is our 3rd slab project. We made castles using card board armatures. They turned our great. I think everybody has Halloween on their minds because a lot of them are looking spooky.

Our next project will be another food project using the slab technique.

Pizza Anyone?

Clay Pizza, Yum. Once these bad boys are glazed they will look great.
The kids learned the term Trom l'oeil. A french term that means "trick the eye." That is our goal.

Also, thank you so much to my Mom, Cherri Anderson, for making our great green canvas table cloth. Now clay won't stick to the wood table.

Monsters

These whimsical monsters are made with a low fire earthenware clay called Terra Cotta. They will look great in a garden and might even scare off some pests. They won't be glazed, so once they are bisque fired they can be taken home and enjoyed.

coil pots

Please forgive the "lateness" of this week's post. I've had a cold and sick kids... very sorry.
On Monday the mud buds made
coil pots.



Patterns were added with stamps for decoration. Stamps can be made out of anything and the girls used traditional rubber stamps, bisque ware stamps as well as odds and ends such as screws and clay tools.
Vocabulary learned this week included: slip, score, coil and pattern.


Here is a teaser for Monday the 22nd of September....
MONSTERS!!!!

First day of class

getting started is GREAT. students viewed a short film about the historic pueblo potters in new mexico. cultures across the world and throughout history have used clay- but living in the south west i thought this video would be most appropriate for our young potters. we also created our very first pots. we used the pinch method to make simple pinch pots. students also learned some clay vocabulary including: plastic, leather hard, green ware, bisque ware, glaze, kiln, and fire.