Single Firing ---saving time and kiln wear and electricity

Just sharing---I have recently had very good luck glazing and firing greenware (single firing) in my electric Skut kiln.  Held my breath, but it all came out beautifully, no cracks, etc.  FYI, in this firing, used Little Loafer's clay (also one piece of sculpture was Standard brown clay), all cone 5, decorated with my underglazes/and silkscreened underglazes, and then covered with Amaco's HF9 Zinc free clear glaze.  All seemed a perfect fit and boy this sure saves time with no separate bisque firing.  Glazes were brushed on.
I did a two hour hold on front end to be sure all my glazes, etc were good and dry, then fired to Cone 5 at "slow"---this time I refrained from peeking which I have a habit of doing when temp gets about 500, but I waited patiently and was rewarded.

I have been doing this for more than a year now and have had great success with low-fire pieces very similar to these.  I had done smaller jewelry pieces of cone 5 single firing but these are the largest pieces at the higher firing temperature that I have single fired.  I will do the bulk of my work in this way from now on.

some finished jewelry and a few bits

Getting into Ceramic Jewelry

After lugging heavy pots, etc to shows, I have decided to try my hand at making some ceramic jewelry pieces.  A lot lighter and could be fun.  I will have to get busy getting them on chains, earwires, findings, etc., but here is a peek at some of the bits I have been making several using my silkscreens.  All of these are midrange stoneware, porcelain mix.  They are pretty I think and I might be able to do something with them. The ones with dark backgrounds are really a glaze that looks like silver, though it is hard to photograph and show as silver.

Hooked on Houses

Sold the first "houses" platter, and now have a few more pieces in that theme

Clay Book

For over a year now I have been toying with an idea to make a clay book.  I especially wanted to feature several techniques, particularly my silkscreens in this book.  I made 4 slabs and decorated them, but broke two before firing, so the other two (actually two sided), were just hanging around after bisque firing.  I finally glazed them and fired them and this is what resulted:

I am not entirely happy and need to fine tune the idea a little.  It is appealing though but the ceramic noise  when pages come together is a little daunting.  I just saw Ellen Currans Pottery on the west coast had a similar notion and made a book as well,  I like the way she treated the ends with thread to compensate for the sound.  I had just laid out some paper pages that I was going add in the middle, maybe sewing them with threads, and with a little batting in the middle.  Also have not dismissed the idea of fabric inserts also.  A work in progress, I think I will try this again.

Also coming out of the kiln

Some new things

Just finished Diana Fayt's online class on Surface Treatments.  We learned how to make a neat folded foot platter which can also hang on the wall as decoration, here are some of the surface treatment work I did.
Always nice to add a few new techniques.  I am pretty pleased with the results and have more ideas.

New Kite flyers

Another coral box

Mermaid Tail Vases

Experimenting with Majolica

Red earthenware platter, dipped in  Linda Arbuckle recipe for white majolica glaze and overpainted with underglazes.

New Majolica Mini Dishes

                    --sold all the others and love playing around with these.

New Beach Teapot

My new Beach Teapot just listed in my ETSY Shop, thought I would try and list a few things again:

Here is the listing

And pot with oranges

QR code on my pots

I have been meaning to do this for a  long time, so these pots finally are "marked" with a QR code I crated then made a silkscreen of it and can put this little message on the bottom of my pots (put on greenware) --underglaze through silkscreen.  I have some other ideas to use these QR codes on my ceramic also.  Stay tuned.  You can create your own QR coded message in several places on the internet.  And, of course, if you have a smart phone with a QR reader app you can read what it says.