Firstly, I’ve added those blue beads and the red ceramic ring prototype to my Etsy shop.

Meanwhile I think I’ve finally discovered the solution to a problem I’ve been having for a while. It’s been really difficult for me to get my beads glazed thickly enough. I originally painted on my glaze, which is apparently the “normal” way bead makers do it, to keep the glaze from getting in the bead holes…but it was really hard to figure out how many coats were enough (my glaze manufacturer said “two to three coats,” which was clearly too low), plus because my beads are pretty small I was still getting glaze in the holes…plus, between you and me, it felt like I was often removing just as much glaze as I was putting on with each additional coat.

So I came up with two solutions: the first one is the one I’m trying now, which is to hold the beads between my fingers, covering the bead holes, and physically dip them into the glaze. This is kinda messy, and I then have to do touch-ups to the area my fingers covered. I’ve only done one test fire of beads glazed this way, and the results were kind of disappointing. The beads tended to me more glazed on one side than the other, and many of them were still not glazed thickly enough. So I’ve done another test batch that will hopefully fix both problems. I have yet to test my second solution, which is to fill the bead holes with wax resist and dip them entirely into the glaze.

But I think there might be another factor entirely that’s contributing to my glazing woes, which is the bisque temperature.

A few months ago I starting using a new kind of clay that I haven’t been terribly happy with. It’s called B-Mix with Sand, and I think it’s by Laguna Clays. There’s probably nothing wrong with it for other uses, but for me…well. I suppose the problem was that I told the lady at the store that I handbuild, as opposed to working on a wheel. Which is true. However, it automatically led her to believe that I needed clay with lots of grog, which is (basically) sand, because my work needed more support. This is not true, because of the scale of what I generally build, and how I build it. As it is the gros makes it a bit harder to get nice smooth beads.

Wth the new clay also, apparently, came a new firing range. I usually bisque (this is the first fire, before the glaze is applied) at cone 06. But if you bisque your ware at too high a temperature, it will make it much more difficult to get enough glaze to absorb/stick to it. (If you bisque it too low, it can absorb too much glaze and become brittle.) So next time I’m going to try bisquing at cone 07, and see if that helps.

And I’m probably going to switch to another clay when this runs out, too.

Also, entirely unrelated, but: Did you know that my Etsy shop (and every other Etsy shop) has an RSS feed? Well, I didn’t until a couple days ago! Nifty!

At this point I’m just waiting for a couple things to finish drying before I do my first bisque fire. This was my workspace yesterday:

As you can see, I’ve made lots of beads, I appear to have successfully made several bead molds, with more on the way (we’ll see how they survive the firing) and I have some other misc. stuff in the works–not pictured is a vase I made last week, plus today I made a dozen teeny little pinch pots, intended for use when I’m sorting out this big bag of mixed-up glass beads I have. And, later last night I also finished the big cup you can see in progress in that picture.

I’ve been trying to make a massive amount of test tiles, but I can’t find an efficient, uniform way to do it. I’ve decided to find a simple cookie cutter, or make something similar myself.

Recently the person behind Cavendish Soap Works (whose product I haven’t tried, but plan to–those soaps look lovely and the scents sound great) posted a question to the Etsy forums. S/he wanted to make a foot scrubber out of clay, preferably with a terra cotta color, but didn’t know what kind of clay s/he needed. I was curious about it myself, so I did some research.

Terra cotta is a type of earthenware clay, which can’t be used unglazed in the shower, or with food, because it will absorb water in the shower and harbor bacteria.

A stoneware/high-fire clay is aptly suited to this purpose because clay fired to a high enough temperature will not take in any water. To create a scrubber, you may want a clay with a high grog content (grog is a sort of “sand” made from bits of already-fired clay which gives the wet clay more stability and the fired clay a coarser texture). You can also buy grog separately and add it.

In the high-fire range it can be difficult to get the rich terracotta color. This clay is the most red and/or most deeply-colored stoneware clay I’ve seen. In addition, using a red iron oxide stain might make it a little more colorful and shouldn’t change the clay surface too much.

Nope, that title’s not a euphemism. I’m reposting my response to a question on the Etsy forums, from another member who asked why the holes in ceramic beads are relatively large in comparison to other beads:

Generally speaking, the holes in glazed ceramic beads have to be a certain size because the only way to glaze the entire outside of the beads is to string them on short lengths of high-temperature wire, which is a standard thickness. Thinner wire would sag and ruin the beads in the kiln.

I recommend stringing ceramic beads on beading wire instead of thread/floss. You could also try putting a dab of epoxy glue inside the hole of the bead when using thinner stringing materials, which should hold it just as well as knotting would.

The heads on headpins are often too small for the bead hole. The best solution I’ve found is what I did with these earrings: Below the bead that’s too big for the headpin, place another bead that is small enough to stay on the pin, but larger than the hole in the bead above it. If the small bead is the same color/metal as the pin, it might even look like you’re using a fancy ball-head pin!

MsAnomaly also suggests:
“If the holes are too big on a bead, I ’stuff’ it! What I mean is: insert a thin bugle bead or even some very small round beads inside the large hole. It keeps the large-hole bead nice and straight on the line, and prevents it from ‘wobbling’ and looking off-center. Since the small beads are inside the hole, you can’t even tell they are there!”

I still haven’t done my first ceramic firing. Some things weren’t dry enough today, and without them I don’t feel I have a full enough load. I don’t really like the three pinch pots I made yesterday, now that they’re dry, but they’ll still be good to put beads in or something later on. I also made some larger cylindrical beads, which look quite nice. I had tried to make some bead molds but discovered I made them wrong–apparently I have to coat the beads with vegetable oil to keep them from sticking to the clay as it dries around them. Oh well.

Today I made some tiles to use for testing. I used a method I really wouldn’t recommend–I was just trying it out. I took a wooden picture frame and pressed clay into it until it was tile-shaped, using the flat bottom of a glass to smush it in and a piece of plastic to scrap it flat.

Actually, the method itself wasn’t the problem–that worked quite well. The problem was that the frame had a bevel on the inside, the outside edge of the clay had to be trimmed. I also trimmed that rectangle into three smaller rectangles, since the frame was rather big–apparently, according to the internet, I should have waited until the clay was leather-hard to do this. They seem to have turned out okay thusfar, but it remains to be seen how badly they may warp or crack.

I also spent about 8 hours yesterday filling orders of decanted perfume, a side-hobby of mine, and getting Etsy orders ready to mail. I think I have something like 35 envelopes to mail in the next two days. Yikes.

Actually, not on the wall, but in the mail, headed my way. A glaze company’s sending me 4oz. sample bottles of their entire line. I’m so excited!

Tomorrow I get to discover whether or not the girl I got my clay from actually knew what she was talking about–that is, that my clay is actually high-fire. Fortunately that doesn’t involve risking melting my whole kiln full of ware, since I bisque at the same temperature whether or not the clay’s low-fire. I’ll just have to do a test or two afterward, to find out how mature the clay is at that point.

I don’t think I’ll be picking up any more free, unmarked clay any more. Too complicated. I hope the other varieties I got from her aren’t as groggy as this one, too…

I’ll also be doing my “About” page here in a few minutes, and I’ve added another link to my “Blogroll” (which fortunately won’t be called that once the new layout is done): West Coast Crafty. Yay!

Following up on the last entry, sometimes, the internet is exactly the wealth of resources and information that it should be.

See, everybody needs references. And today, I needed a refresher on some very basic stuff. One quick search, and I find a photo tutorial on how to make a pinch pot, which is what I need, because I’m making glaze test pots instead of tiles.

Speaking of glazes, I found those online too–well, specifically, I got a few bags of dry glazes for $1 each, courtesy of SCRAP, which I originally found online and have been visiting regularly ever since.

And I needed to know things about ceramic beads, and sure enough, I found out the best way to glaze them and the best way to load them in a kiln.

I found all sorts of little pointers here, too. I like having my own ideas confirmed by more experienced people.

The internet is great for coming to your own consensus. It won’t always give you a straight answer, but it will often help you get your answers straight.

I’ve discovered that virtually all of the information available on the internet on the subject of ceramics and kilns is written by/for either someone working on a group studio, or someone working from a house.

I work from neither a house nor a group studio. I work from a two-bedroom apartment that I share with two other people. I have a yard, but I share it with approximately 15 other tenants. I wish there were more info out there for someone with the limited space and use requirements that I have, but there really doesn’t seem to be.

What the Internet Did and Didn’t Tell Me About Working With Ceramics:

1. Rehydrating Clay.
I found lots of different methods of how to do this. Most of them involved smashing the dried clay with a hammer prior to hydrating, and/or drying it in thin layers on big plastic racks after it had been hydrated. The first seemed too messy and I didn’t have the equipment/supplies for the second. I ended up just putting a whole block of clay in a bucket full of water, covering it, leaving it in the sun, and mushing it up with my hands after a few days. This worked pretty well, but would have worked better if I’d used less water and left it alone longer.

Of course that also would have been a lot easier if my back yard included something everyone else takes for granted: a hose, or a spigot, or some kind of running water. But, no, all the water I needed had to be lugged down three flights of rickety old stairs.

Following another internet suggestion, I next tried drying the muddy stuff by putting it in a pillowcase and hanging it to drip-dry. After three days in the sun, this only resulted in one ruined pillowcase. I then moved the clay back into the bucket and left it in the sun for a few more days. This once again worked well, and would have worked better if I’d had the time to leave it there a few days more.

But by then I just really wanted my clay. I brought it upstairs and spread it in thin layers on some upholstery fabric samples I had laying around. I left some of these out for about a day and it turned out perfect, but I really wanted some of that clay that night.

So following more internet directions, I took the least-wet clay I had and formed it into a bunch of small, clumsy little coils. I made the coils into small arches on a baking pan, and baked them for 5-10 minutes at 250 degrees in my oven.

With most of them, this made very workable clay, but it was a lot of effort for a very small amount of clay. I really do not recommend getting that impatient. With the rest, the clay got too dry–which was okay, I just stuck it in a bowl with water and it was rehydrated the next day.

2. Kilns

My dad offered to buy me a kiln. I wanted a medium-sized one, but had to settle for the smallest high-fire one I could find, due to space issues. My boyfriend had to haul it up the stairs for me.

I got it installed okay, but my one roommate has had all these questions: about the noise level, about fumes, about smells, about heat. Many of them are valid but I don’t necessarily know how to answer her. Before my old roommate moved out, I worried about him getting drunk and stumbling into the kiln on his way out to have a smoke, getting second-degree burns along the way.

I have the kiln in a very well-ventilated room, that’s sealed off from the rest of the house, and the kiln isn’t very big…but I haven’t yet been able to get a clear verdict on whether or not I also have to use the vent system it came with. I have the vent set up, and I can use it, but…it’s loud. And the kiln room is right next to the kitchen. And I don’t want to drive anyone, including myself, crazy. And the ventilation ducting, by necessity, must rest on potentially flammable materials, and I can’t figure out if it gets too hot for that to be safe.

The internet appears to have failed me on this one.

I hate getting from point A to point B. Well, not all the time, but…see, I got a kiln. But I can’t use it until I call an electrician, get him out here, have him install it properly, bake on some kiln wash, and then, you know, make stuff.

And I can’t make stuff until I rehydrate all the clay that I got for free. I could have bought some fresh, but this was free, you know? And I can’t rehydrate it until I clean the buckets that I also got for free. I could have bought some clean ones, but these were free.

Free is good. But free also sometimes requires some extra steps. Which are annoying.

Point A and point B feel like they’re getting increasingly further away.