Rattle

Here is my heart shaped purple rattle. I decided to make a heart because I like hearts and I made it purple because I like the color purple. I started by making two half hearts and hollowing them both out. Once they were hollowed out, I rolled up about 50 tiny balls of clay and wrapped them in newspaper and stuck them inside the hollowed out part of the heart and then sealed the two half hearts together to make one heart. It is necessary to wrap newspaper around the balls of clay you put inside the rattle to prevent the balls of clay from sticking to the surface of the inside of your rattle. This does not mean that the newspaper will stay inside the rattle forever, it will be burned off inside the kiln. Anyway, with my rattle I used a low fire glaze. I put 2 layers of glaze on the heart. It is a fairly simple design. I am pleased with the way it turned out. When you shake it, there is a decent amount of noise from the rattle.

Coil Pot

As you can see in the picture above, this is my ceramic coil pot. I started out by rolling out some clay and making circles out of them. With the coils of clay, I kept stacking them up higher and higher, somewhere in the middle, I decided to add some creativity and made a heart in the middle of my coil pot. This coil pot is about 6 inches tall. It was bigger before but the top part of it came off and was lost after the first firing. It has a very consistent bumpy texture on the surface. For the color, there was no more pink glaze left so I mixed the red and white low fire glazes so make this pinkish color. It turned out nice and glossy and I believe that is goes well with the style of the coil pot.

Slab Box

Here is the slab box I made. I started off by cutting out 6" x 6" square slabs of clay. After I cut out 6 slabs, I started slipping and scoring the sides together to create a box. After the box shape was created, I decided to decorate each side of the box will something nice. One side has a smiling sun, another side has a palm tree, the other side has a heart, and the last side has a flower. The handle of the box is unique because it is shaped like a rose, kind of like the handles of my pinch pot. Once I finished decorating the rides, it was fired once in the kiln. When it came out, I decided to make it all pretty and colorful and added the low fire glaze. As you can see, my pinch pot came out very colorful and the glaze turned out pretty well.

Mug

This is the mug I made in ceramics.
It is pink and has an orange head on the front of it.
I made this mug by first cutting out a circle for the base of the mug.
After I did that, I wrapped a slab of clay in something cylinder shaped then slideed it out so it would be the width of the cylinder shaped thing. After I had my hollow tube, I sliped and scored it onto the base then I added a handle to it. (as you can see, the handle did not turn out as good as I expected).
After I had my template for my mug, I just made a cat head and stuck it onto the mug to add some taste. I also made thin strips on the side so it is kind of 3d on the sides. After the first firing, I glazed my mug with the low fire glaze. I made the main part of it pink, the strips white, and the cat orange. When it came out of the kiln after the second firing, the main part of the mug came out nicely glazed but unfortunately, only part of the cat was glazed/ but it still looks fine. No, I do not plan on actually drinking out of this, I'm pretty sure it's not stable enough and will fall apart. Thanks for coming to my blog/ I hope you come again.

6" cylinder

This is my "six inch cylinder" which is obviously not 6 inches high. Its actual height is probably about 2 inches tall. This cylinder was created on the wheel and I was unfortunately not able to build my cylinder that high. Working on the wheel is more difficult than it looks. Every time I thought I saw progress in it getting taller, it collapsed so I just left it at 2 inches or so. Once it was off the wheel, I left it to dry for a few days and then tripped the uneven sides and but it in the kiln for the first firing. When it came out, I decided to leave the colors pretty simple. I just put the base color yellow and orange and added green polka dots. I later decided to make the inside of the cylinder purple. All the glaze that was used on this cylinder is low fire glaze. I think it turned out nice beside the fact that it is not quite six inches tall.

Pinch Pot

The pinch pot I made looks like a small bowl. It has handles shaped like roses on two sides of the bowl so you can pick it up.  I am deeply sorry that I do not have a picture available at this moment. I was not able to get a hold of the product itself but I will try to upload a photo as soon as I get it. This pinch pot has the letter "R" for "Rina", my name in the middle of the pot. The letter was carved out with a needle and stuck on to the pot. On the sides, as I said earlier, there are handles shaped like roses. At first, people said it would be a good idea to put them there and I thought so myself but after I slipped and scored the handles on to the pot, it looked bit unproportional. After my pinch pot was fired once, I dipped it in what was supposed to be purple glaze and had it fired again. Unfortunately, when the pinch pot came out of the kiln, the supposedly purple glaze turned out a brownish green color and was unevenly glazed. My ceramics teacher recommended to reglaze some of the parts so I did but after that, I never saw it again...

...but if I do, I will let you know how it turned out. Comments are welcome :)

Wire Sculpture: Bear

The first thing we made in Ceramics class are wire animal sculptures with paper mache.  I decided to make this bear. It about 8 inches tall and it can stand on all four legs. The first thing I did was make a three dimensional head. Afterward, I make the body of it separately and attached the two parts together. Once the wiring was complete, I got some ripped up newspapers and pasted it on parts of the wire with paper mache paste until the whole bear was covered in paper mache. As you can see, there is no negative space left. Once everything dried, I painted this bear brown but for some odd reason, it turned out a grayish color. I decided to take a colorful approach so I painted the ears and feet pink. The eyes and other facial features are painted on.  It's face expression looks very smiley and happy. Does it really look like a bear? Please feel free to comment.