Welcome to my blog

 Welcome to my blog. 

I've never written a blog before - so this will be a new adventure - I'm not sure quite yet what I will write, but mostly about art is what I am thinking! 


So Welcome! 

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Popular posts from this blog

A Lesson (Hopefully) Learned

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 Well, this is a bummer.  This photo was posted a few days ago on Facebook.   I knew going into the firing that the plate on the left had a crack, around the ridge but the other plate was completely ok going into the kiln.   After the initial sting of finding them cracked,  I was off to find a reason why this happened and how to keep it from happening again.   What appears to have happened to the first piece was either there was a bit of water left on the piece that settled into the spot where the lip rises and that moisture created a spot of unevenness in the drying process.   For the other piece, that crack appears to have come from uneven heating in the firing.  I had the plates stacked, which I've done many times stacking pieces: tiles, bowls, smaller pieces inside of others, but I think somehow there was an uneven heating causing this crack.   I completed this firing in the test kiln which is a small kiln that ha...
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Art Materials are Expensive, Yo!

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 So in keeping with the making of plates for the series that I'm planning!  The week ended with 6 plates drying last week, and drying this week all under a flannel backed tablecloth.  On Monday, a little clean-up happened on them and set them back to slowly dry (in case that was the reason of the cracking from the last two pieces).   On Friday, impatience got the better of me, and all 6 went into the kiln! One was probably a little damper than I would ordinarily put it in, but again, impatience! While these pieces were going into the kiln, a thought hit me, and so I grabbed the two cracked plates and added a Clay Mender product by Mayco.     I've used this product before, though I prefer making my own paper clay for mending pieces - I've found that paper clay works better for fixing things in the Greenware state.  Paper clay discussion is for another time! :-)  Mayco makes this product, and Amaco makes Bisque Fix - which is a great produ...
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Some info on Lead in Glazes

Have you seen the TikTok or Reels videos that show a person going into their local thrift store and checking plates, bowls, and cups with a little marker for lead? When they mark the piece if the mark changes color it shows that there is lead in the piece and they claim that it shouldn't be sold and they offer to get rid of it for the thrift store?  Let's talk a little bit about lead in ceramics and in glass.  Historically speaking lead was added to the components of the glaze as a flux.  Adding the lead meant that the silica that was used to form the glass part of the glaze meant that the glaze could melt at a lower temperature than without it.  This was good because it meant the kiln did not have to get as hot to melt the glaze on the pieces.  In addition, if a artist was using a low-fire clay then during the glaze firing it did not have to get as hot, and potentially over-fire and melt the clay. Lead was also added to glass for the same reason that it was use...
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