Monday, May 17, 2010

Result Birch tumbler

Remember I made birch tumblers the other day?
They were bisque fired and looked really good but suddenly I was doubting they would look good when glazed. I looked at my stain samples to see if I could apply a bit more color to them as they looked too white. Of course I had a sample which seemed to have the perfect color but I never wrote down how I mixed it. Bummer and lesson learned!
So I didn't dare to apply it to all my cups and made new samples for future reference.
I mixed some black stain with water and applied it to the cup. I rubbed it off nearly right away and let the cup dry again. Then I applied some transparant glaze and fired it.
I think that it comes pretty close. Perhaps I should leave the stain a tad bit longer to darken it up a bit more. It came out better then I expected but...

You see that some of the glaze chipped off?
That's because the clay slib I made myself didn't really attach to the clay.
So, good that I made a sample and now I know I'll have to add some glaze to the clay slib to make it stick better. I have a lot of cups which have been bisquefired already and I can not change the clay slib anymore.
I'll cross my fingers it was just accidental with this one cup! :)

But I really do like the end result! Do you?