Teacher Appreciation Mug Gifts
Mugs thrown last Thursday
Where did the time go? Last week, I realized with a start that 5th grade graduation was a week away and I hadn’t even started making teacher appreciation gifts yet. Sure, I could have purchased something, but I wanted to give some of the teachers a more personalized gift. Plus, they all know me as a clay person and might have been a little disappointed to receive something store bought. Though, I don’t think that they expect gifts either….
So, with a week to go, I set out at warp speed to make some mugs.
Handles attached on Sunday – Bisque fired on Tuesday
With a little babying and some begging & cajoling, I added handles and bisque fired fasssssssssst – 4 days after making the mug bodies.
Whew – glazed and decal fired on Wednesday and Thursday respectively
I managed to squeeze all 5 mugs into my test kiln and got to glazing and adding decals.
My favorite mug – "math = language of the universe"
This one is my fave and is a present for Jasmine’s math teacher. I am super proud of my daughter – she skipped 5th grade math this year and she, along with a handful of other kids at her school did the 6th grade math curriculum with “Mr. Reeves”. One of his favorite sayings is “math is the language of the universe”.
Pretty cool…if I do say so myself
If you think about the statement, it’s true. 1 + 1 = 2 regardless if you’re in Denver or Shanghai or the planet Saturn.
For the art teacher who let me use her room every Tuesday after school for the past 2 years to teach my clay class
I can’t leave out the art teacher who I personally think has the hardest job in the school. She only gets 45 minutes a week with each class and is constantly cleaning up and preparing for a new class. There is no down time at all.
Look at the shrinkage between bisque and glaze fire!
I didn’t glaze all the mugs – only the ones that I absolutely needed today – last day of school. I was pretty surprised at how much the mugs shrunk after the glaze fire. The mugs were roughly the same size after throwing – used 1 lb of cone 6 porcelain clay. This is another example of seeing is believing…in the Mile Hi Ceramics Catalog it does say that shrinkage is about 18%.
I used to be sad that my daughter didn't look much like me, but clearly I'm relieved she takes after her dad 
But I digress. I mentioned earlier that I am super proud of my daughter – she is a good kid and a great student. I told her the other day that I hope she’ll stay geeky through high school – to which she responded, “I’m not a geek!” So I rephrased, “It’s okay to be a little nerdy….” Her response, “I’m not a nerd!” I tried again, “It’s okay – I’m a big dork myself.” Big smile from her, “Mom I’m a dork too.” I remembered that she and her posse of friends were called dorks in the beginning of the year by some of the “cool kids” and in their defense, they devised an ancronym in response to those who called them dorks.
D.O.R.K. = Defense Over Rude Kids. They weren’t called dorks for long.
Must leave to get ready for 5th grade Continuation,
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.
Ceramic Laser Toner Decal Success
Eat Crow decal side view
This is one of those processes that I have been dying to try, I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier. I think it may be because it seemed so complicated and to be honest, it required the purchase of a laser printer. This bowl has been waiting ever so patiently on a shelf in my studio for at least 2 months now for bit of embellishment. Last Thursday, I decided to do the test firing because I plan to add decals to Jean’s custom box and I don’t want to screw it up.
Why “eat crow“? I’m eating a piece of my own humble pie right now and, well, I think a lot of people can identify with the phrase. Haven’t we all made mistakes in our lifetimes that we’d rather forget? This is a not so subtle reminder not to make those same mistakes again.
Eat Crow decal on interior of bowl
There’s always a bit of planning and research (for me at least) before I can jump into a project. I always get frustrated with my husband because he doesn’t read the instructions and then gets irritated and grumpy when things aren’t working. But, I found a ton of great information on ceramic decal firing including from Paul Wandless’ book, Image Transfer on Clay, Justin Rothshank’s website, Linda Arbuckle’s website and also fellow Etsy Mud Team member, Keith Phillip’s blog.
Colorado Art Studio Bar Code decal
So, after reading and reading and reading some more, I did it. I finally took the time to print a page of decals and used a few pots for test firings. I found that the simpler image of the “Eat Crow” decal printed clearer than the water lily or bar code. The bar code began to disintegrate a bit in places, so I’m not sure it will actually scan. It is on the bottom of the pot and was fired upside down – not sure if that makes sense or a difference.
Here are some photos of “how to apply a decal”:
So, I took everyone’s advice and fired the kiln slow at ^04 since I the glazes are ^6. Here are a few highlights from my firing log – wish I had taken photos (maybe next time). I used a small manual AIM 88T test kiln with kiln sitter – the temperature goes from low 1-8 to high. I followed the firing instructions on Linda Arbuckle’s ceramic decal handout available on her site – she recommends leaving the lid cracked until the kiln reaches red heat and I left the peep open for the entire firing.
- 6:30 am started the firing on low, lid cracked.
- 8:30 am lid cracked, moved temp to 2 – decal is beginning to burn off and it’s turning brown around the edges.
- 10:30 am lid cracked, moved temp to 4
- 11:30 am I couldn’t help peeking an hour early – the decal is completely black and I can barely see the image – a slight panic sets in
- 12:30 pm moved temp to 6 and closed the lid – the kiln is glowing red – the decal cover coat must be almost burned off, I can see the image clearly and the black is practically not visible anymore.
- 1:30 pm moved temp to 8 – just waiting…
- 2:30 pm – eek – the kiln is off and the electricity to my garage is off – the circuit breaker must have blown. That’s never happened during a firing before. The Aim kiln is a 120 volt and I had my space heater plugged into the same outlet – doh. Unplugged heater, reset circuit breaker. Luckily the kiln is pretty hot – so I just turned it back on at the temp where it was before.
- 3:30 pm moved temp to High.
- Kiln turned off around 4:30 pm. Normally the kiln wouldn’t take quite as long, but the tripped breaker added some time.
- Next morning at 6:00 am, I opened the cool to the touch kiln and smiled a big smile!
I’ve tried scratching the decals off – the iron oxide decal is truly fused to the glaze. I haven’t run these through the dishwasher yet, but it’s on my agenda.
So, there you have it in a nutshell. I have a full day today and must run – I’m going to a in house plate/platter workshop at the Colorado Potters Guild and am taking my daughter to see Coraline this afternoon. Forgive my typos – no time to edit….
Have a good Sunday,
~Cynthia
Love My Wacom Tablet!
- Water Lily Sketch
I installed my Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet last night and have been playing with it today. New toys are sooo much fun! It came bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter Essentials and some other program that I haven’t installed yet. I didn’t install Photoshop Elements since I already have the full blown version, but I did install Corel Painter and it’s pretty neat and very easy to use. My daughter has been bugging me to install the tablet for weeks now and I’ve promised to let her play with it today after school. I can just see -we’re both going to be fighting over it now.
The pencil tool feels surprisingly like sketching on paper – there’s even an eraser. It takes a little practice getting used to the fact that while I was sketching on the tablet, I was watching my computer monitor. My hand didn’t always do what I wanted it too like I was having a eye/hand coordination issue. At any rate, after a bit more practice, I’m turning some digital sketches into ceramic laser toner decals.
I used the trace function today in Corel to “sketch” an image of a painting I did a few years ago:
Water Lily Painting o/c, 2006
Cartoon Me
Happy Monday,
~Cynthia
