How to Spray Clay

A productive day today. Yesterday I finally finished the basic Twitter bird...

Now I just have to change it from an ill-proportioned blue lump into a menacing bird like below!

Despite all the torrential rain, we have a beautiful blossoming tree at college which I've been noticing (and wondering why it's flowering now).

Last night, when I was doing some ceramics research, I remembered the tree 

so decided to paint some blossom on one of my bowls. (A bit like the ones below.)

 I was really pleased when I saw my first (biscuit) fired bowls. 

Not bad for things modelled in press moulds.

So, with the blossom in mind, I velvet underglazed the first with pale blue glaze, applying it using a wet sponge.  I tried to do it reasonably unevenly to give it a bit of texture when fired.

The second bowl I then glazed with tin (basically white) achieved by dipping the bowl in the tin and then getting rid of the excess. It was really satisfying, rubbing it gently with your finger to get rid of any 'double' bits (really therapeutic!)

 Next, to get the first outside glaze, I had the great excitement of using the spray booth. That was really cool. (I could get into this ceramics thing).

 Then I hand dipped the bowl into matt blue turquoise - and Denise was quite impressed with my evenness of dipping (although the other side's not so good!) Instead of firing this as stoneware, she's going to fire it as earthenware (as we think that's what we did with my sample tile).