Last Week into This Week...

It's hard to believe that it's May 1st tomorrow. How is the time flying so fast! As usual, I'm a busy bee with all kinds of buzzing going around.

Here's the recap:

Grad School: I turned in my final 3000 word paper today! Yeah! Now I have just one more week of reading and blogging ahead and I'll be done for the semester. I'm glad I only took this one class to get my feet wet, 'cause it was a commitment with everything else going on. I don't know if school will get harder or easier, but I'm glad I'm doing it. This was a great class! Thanks to Ed Check, my TTU prof! The class was Research Methods in Art. I'll publish my paper if I get a decent grade, so you all can read it. It's revealing!

WD: This week I had a few classes; Drop Ring Vessels and PMC Silver Beads. Here are some pix!

These are 2 drop ring molds with their happy blanks sitting on top. It's important to make sure they are level before you fire them, so here's the bubble level on top....hope I removed that before firing! Both molds needed slight shimming to make them level. I'll post after pix when done!

Here's a PMC Silver lentil bead, it's approx. 1.5" It's hollow!

This is a glazed bisque bead with a PMC ribbon wrapped around it. This was fun to do. This bead is 1.75" It's almost too big. But i'll find something to do with it to make it cool and wearable.

This is a bisque bead that was painted with PMC and then PMC clay was applied. It's about  3/4". The other side has a cool leaf imprint.

This one is my favorite! This is a hollow PMC bead made by painting PMC slip onto a cotton armature, then layering clay and syringe over that. It's approximately 2" tall, and even though it's hollow, it's heavy. When fired, the cotton armature burns out and leaves the inside hollow. We're carrying the cotton armatures and the bisque beads at the shop if anyone wants to try this. SO COOL!

Also....Denise Leone will be arriving at Wired Designs studios on Wednesday to teach her class. I'm so looking forward to it. We still have one open spot if someone wants to jump in last minute. I'm excited because we're using Rapid Mask! it doesn't need a wash out! YEAH!!!!

Commissions: The vases for the the church in college station turned out great. They are still cooling in the kiln so I'll post pix of that tomorrow with the drop rings. The Alvarez gray metallic sink is slumped, but...alas....not all goes as planned and the rim is crooked, so I'll have to spend an hour or so grinding the darn lip. I know it make the vessel sink look even more stunning, but I'm kind of lazy, so I was hoping I wouldn't have to do it.

Luann's sink turned out gorgeous, but the casting was just a little too thin, so it had to go back into the kiln with more glass. Here's how that looked.

I added 2 more half sheets of color and some clear medium grit to bulk it up. Hopefully it won't change the color much, because the blank was gorgeous and the client approved us to go to the next step.