Stoneware Wall Box Tile Trio
5 Ravens Wall Box Tiles, printed stoneware clay, mishima, brushed glazes and laser toner decals
This trio was a ton of fun to make and decorate. In fact I enjoyed making these so much that I had intended to make more right away. Now that the show pressure is off and the making cycle interrupted, it’s been harder to get back in the studio groove. It doesn’t help that the month of May is a terribly busy one with my daughter’s school activities and my extra volunteer/chaperone/sub duties related to school. But, it’s almost over…the school year officially ends in a mere 11 days when my (weep, weep) 5th grader graduates to middle school. Or as Denver Public Schools puts it – “continues” – sounds more feel good P.C., don’t you think?
Three 2.5" square by 1" deep wall boxes
After constructing the wall boxes, I played around with placement – shuffling them around until I liked how the textures lined up. BTW, this set up was not my final choice.
Side view
To keep the boxes from warping after I constructed them, I weighted them between 2 pieces of drywall board and periodically checked on them until they were bone dry. These were constructed with 45° degree beveled joints which I then scored and slipped with paper clay for strength before joining.
Added a small notched slab for easy hanging
Sarah, a ceramicist up in South Dakota, asked how these hang the other day and I just happen to have a photo of my system in the archives. When I’ve made these in the past, I’ve tried different techniques from just using the upper edge, to punched holes for wire to these little notched additions. The little slabs were left over after I constructed the boxes and just seemed like a good idea at the time. I centered the notch with a measured center point on the top of each tile. These can also sit on a shelf instead of being hung on a wall (see the first photo).
Meanwhile, I did a little pendant glaze firing last night in my mini Aim test kiln. Tomorrow is my last teaching day for my after school clay class and I decided to give the kids a little going away present – star shaped pendants with their initials decaled on the front. The kiln is still too hot to touch this morning – but I did prop the lid open to speed cooling. After I drop my daughter off at the school bus stop and take the hounds for a run, I’m going to spend the am looking for a cool font and will print the initial decals.
Have a great week,
Cynthia
Custom and Commercial Ceramic Decals
J.T. McMaster Ceramic Decal Specialists Website
Several months ago, when I first started posting about my desire to add decals to my work, I was contacted by Lauren Skoll, director of J.T. McMaster – a commercial and custom decal provider out of South Africa. She mentioned that she would be in the Denver area around the same time that the Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show was taking place and I told her I’d love to meet her and see her company’s decals in person.
You know me though (or maybe you don’t) – but I am a glutton for learning…err punishment sometimes. I want to understand the process myself and normally will set out to learn how to do something even though it might be easier and more cost effective to farm some tasks out. Even so, when the Potters Guild event approached, I decided to meet Lauren with an open mind.
Decal samples – hearts, geckos and South African cloth
Lauren came to the sale with a lot of sample decals and left many behind for the guild members to use. I took the decals in the photo above home with the idea that I will play around with these a bit – push the medium to figure out limitations and potential. Unlike the laser toner decals, these are screen printed with ceramic over-glaze colors and fire at a much lower temperature – there are firing instructions on the company’s website. Whereas laser toner decals fire to a sepia tone and the firing temperature depends more on the glaze temperature to which the decal is adhered, these full color decals fire to roughly cone 016.
The other thing that I like about using these is that artists can upload original artwork and specify colors for McMasters to make custom decals – so there’s a lot of potential. Once the proofs are finished, it would be easy to reorder. This would be infinitely easier than learning to screen print oneself and doing all the trial & error proofs before getting good results. I’ve taken a close look at the decals and they are very crisp and clear and am assuming that they would remain so after firing. I suppose one hesitation for me is that I don’t want my work to look commercial – but after checking out the company’s website, there are individual artists who are using these decals very effectively.
I also asked Lauren about prices and sizes, however because each job is custom, cost varies. She did tell me that the currency exchange is very favorable towards the dollar right now and shipping is nominal. The company tries to get as many decals as possible on an A4 size sheet of paper which is slightly narrower and longer than a letter sized sheet of paper (8.5″ x 11″).
Here in the US, Easy Ceramic Decals also makes custom decals – as well as a few other businesses. Just google ceramic decals and voilà! I’ve never used color decals before, so who knows where this venture could lead?
Meanwhile, I’ll play with these and I still have the screen printing supplies to try making my own color decals this summer.
Happy Wednesday,
~Cynthia
P.S. We’re in the market for a pocket sized digital camera for our trip overseas because my camera is way too clunky and heavy. I am seriously considering the Sony Cybershot, the Nikon Coolpix or the Canon Elph. Any thoughts? I had a bit of sticker shock, but in a good way after looking at some in the store. More MP and better digital zoom for a fraction of the cost compared to my 5 year old Olympus. Amazing.
Soul Sole Plates
Shoe soles l-r Danskos, Tevas, Skechers
Please excuse my fun with homophones, but my students and I played around the other day in clay class with our shoes and some clay. While packing up unsold pots after the Colorado Potters Guild Spring show last weekend, I stopped to talk with Penny Woolsey, who also teaches clay classes to kids. I picked up one of her unsold pots which was a really cool plate with a textured rim, when she remarked, “Haven’t you ever made soul pots before with your students?” Of course, she didn’t mean “soul”, but rather “sole”. She explained the project to me and I thought, “Perfect!” – this is what we’ll make in the next class.
But, first, I had to try the project at home to make sure the kids could handle it. I set off for my closet in search of cool soles and came up with 3 pairs of shoes that worked – Danskos, Tevas and Skechers – yep, I’m practical that way aiming for comfort over style.
After rolling out a slab and cutting the basic shape – use a shoe to print texture into the clay
I used all three shoes for a variety of textures and only printed on the rim of the plate. Some of my students printed the entire slab with very cool results. The kids had a great time comparing cool sole textures and mixing and matching. I’m not sure anyone had ever looked at the bottom of their shoes before – I know I don’t normally make a practice out of it.
Using the "plate-o-matic" technique, I placed the slab on a piece of upholstery foam and used a wood block to press down in the center which causes the rim to pop up – presto magic instant plate
I saw this in a Pottery Making Illustrated article last year and really loved the technique. The article is easily found but is a direct download – so if you’re interested here’s the pdf version: Plate-O-Matic.
Leatherhard sole plate
My plate is drying and I didn’t get any photos of the kid’s plates taken because I decided to go ahead and load the kiln yesterday. I’m not firing till the weekend, but it’s another busy week and I’m trying to save time when and where I can.
Tomorrow, I head down town with my daughter’s class for the Denver Shakespeare Festival. It’s a lot of fun, but also exhausting. Most of the K-12 schools in Denver Public Schools are participating. It’s fun to see everyone all dressed up in period costumes and at their thespian best.
It’s almost the weekend,
~Cynthia
No Time to Photograph Last Decal Firing
Pots waiting patiently for their turn for decal attention
Happy Monday morning everyone! After a making/glazing/decal marathon of the past several weeks, I can now breathe a huge contented sigh enjoyed by stress free people all over the world. Not to worry, I’m sure I’ll repeat my manic potter behavior for the show next fall. Try as I might, I can’t seem to break the cycle of cramming for a show at the last minute. The Colorado Potters Guild Spring Show opened Thursday evening and on Wednesday afternoon, I was still applying decals to my work. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek is all my brain was yelling all day long.
Applying decals to tiny tiny covered box
After my small decal firings, this was by far the most ambitious one yet. I didn’t quite fill my Skutt 1027, but almost did. After taking a deep breath, I buckled down – stopped answering emails, phone calls etc. in preparation for assembly line style decal printing and application.
Decaled work ready to be fired
For some of my work, I had already decided on a design – but for at least half, I sort of made it up as I went along. I looked at the pot trying to decide how to “dress” it, if you will. While decals are without a doubt less labor intensive than hand painting – which was one of my hopes for the process – it is not without a time commitment. It took quite a long time to format the decals on a letter sized sheet of decal paper in order to get the most decals out of one sheet. I used a variety of sources for decals, including royalty free clip art, tweaked digital photographs (my own and royalty free ones – read the fine print though for release info, digital scans of actual leaves and sketches of my art work (thanks Wacom tablet).
First 2 shelves of decal firing look good
By 8pm, I was ready to fire the kiln and instead of doing a slow fire because quite frankly I didn’t have the luxury of time, I programmed a fast fire to cone 04, gave a nod to the kiln goddess, crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d have some work to bring to the Guild’s sale. I was up till almost 1am making sure that the kiln would shut off – I had no idea how long a fast cone 04 firing would take (fyi – about 5 hours).
Next shelf looks good too
By 6am Thursday morning, the kiln was still too hot to touch – but being the gambler that I am, I pulled all the peeps, and cracked the lid ever so slightly. By 8am, the kiln had dropped another 300 degrees – so I propped the lid open wider – and by 10 am I was able to unload. Mind you, I think the kiln goddess was listening to my pleas and I got lucky. In my opinion, pots are best when they’re still warm to the touch, much like melt in your mouth chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Blue butterfly box
I can’t tell you how darn happy I was as I unloaded the kiln! Squeals of joy, jumping up and down – woohoos escaping my lips. My joy was short lived, however when I realized that I only had an hour+ to inventory, price & shower before I had to deliver the work to the show venue at noon on Thursday. I have a few candid shots of my work sitting on my work table and that’s it.
Work waiting to be priced
Luckily, I volunteered to be on the photograph team for the Spring Show – so I did pull out 6 of my better pieces to be photographed. I won’t get those back for several weeks though because another member was taking the photographs and needs to upload and edit all of them. I tried taking some over his shoulder with my camera, but I forgot my tripod at home, so they didn’t turn out so well. I’ll share later in the week.
So, how did our show turn out? I didn’t hear how the group as a whole did, but I personally did very well. I brought 80 pieces and sold 60 – all of my covered boxes sold, along with some new wall tiles, all my mugs, butter dishes, and almost every single one of my new decal pieces. I even sold most of my older work that I had priced attractively and wanted to get rid of because I’m tired of looking at it. I have 6 sets of buttons, some small oblong trays, a couple of misc. pieces, and 3 weed pots left over.
In celebration, I hung out with my family this weekend and didn’t do a whole lot of anything besides going to my daughter’s soccer games, laundry and working in the yard a bit. Today, I head back to the studio – I’m pretty jazzed about my new wall tile boxes.
Have a good week,
~Cynthia
