My creative space

Today I'll be shipping off the work that was done at my workshop a few weeks back. It's about time after 2 weeks. I love how it all came out & can't wait to see what the ladies will do with it all after they receive it.

Do you remember I did some experiments with dipping thread into porcelain and twisting it around paper beads? Here are the results from that:The beads didn't come out really well, the thread is broken on the spot where I placed it on the kiln shelf. But they are quite sturdy I must say which is a complete surprise to me. I'll place 'em on some silversand next time so that they don't touch the shelves and hope that will make 'em whole.I also did a few beads with solid clay around the paperbead and then added a texture to them. They came out really sturdy and are light as a feather.
In the left hand corner you see the left over of a bead where I twisted thread around and then dipped it into porcelain slib.
Want to show your creative space? Hop over to Kootoyoo to play! It's fun! :)

I love red!

My favorite color is without a doubt green. Mossy, lime, dark, light,... green makes me happy.
But I have a deep love for red too. Up until now, I have been searching for a nice red glaze and I have not been satisfied with the ones I bought in the past.
Red is a very difficult color to glaze in general so it's always a surprise when I make samples of a new red glaze. I was in for a nice surprise when I opened the kiln last week. I love this deep and dark red. Do you like it too?

Inspiration + experiment = creation

Last week, I was reading one of my favorite blogs 'The red thread' by Lisa Tilse. I love to visit it because it's an amazing source of inspiration, it bursts of creativity & it has this whimsical twist that I love! Last monday I bumped into this post that inspired me to make this...

a paper boat
a fabric boat drenched in clay slib

a kiln fired ceramic boatDo you think I will need to take up origami soon? :)

Happy sunday everyone!
I'll be at a craftfair today and hope I can show you some pictures tommorrow! :)
And I'll draw a winner for the give-away when I get back from the fair so you can still enter here...

How to color clay?

Sometimes it's fun to work with clay in a different color. Clay however does not come naturally in many different colors so you can color it yourself with pigments or body stains.
For the European Streetteam challenge I wanted to make some bats so I needed black clay & decided to make it myself.
Here is what you need:
Black body stain, a mask, a scale, gloves, white/grey clay, paper

Weigh the amount of clay you want to color.

Put a piece of paper on your scale and weigh the amount of body stain you want to add.
For black I use more then other colors because I want to make sure it's really black and not a greyish black. I used 4 grams to 200 grams.

Put on your gloves and make a little bowl out of your lump of clay.
(my apologies for the bad quality of these pictures)

Put the body stain in the little bowl.

Fold the bowl close and start kneading carefully so that not too much body stain falls out.

When the clay starts getting too dry, add a bit of water and knead well so that the body stain really mixes with the clay.

This is how it looks when it's ready to use.

Clay dries out really fast, so I usually hold it in a plastic bag and I wrap the part that I'm working with in a damp cloth.

I use a mould that I made to make the bats.
Take a little clay and press it into the mould.

Make sure that it's filled up nicely.

Take a piece of moist clay and press it onto the filled mould and 'pull' the bat out.

I think it came out nicely.

Hey look, small and big ones! :)

And here is how they look when they are fired.
Hey, they turned out grey instead of black! :(
I definately need to use more black body stain next time.
Well, that's what experimenting is all about! :)

Do you want to see how the colored glaze came out? Check it out here! :)