Pretty Shiny Things!

Sputnik has been busily baking away this week getting a few things finished in time for Art in the Park this weekend.

Art in the Park is a craft fair for local artists and crafters held in Caldecott Park, Rugby, Warwickshire on Sunday the 6th July from 12pm - 4pm.

The Curious Ceramics Company will have a stall there selling little bird tea lights, snail planters, plant labels, bird feeders and more  along side our sister company World of Pure Imagination selling toys and other fun stuff.

We've been making lots of letter magnets for this year's fair as they were so popular last time, here they are before firing:




Each tile has to be glazed with 3 layers of glaze before it's ready to fire, so you can imagine, this little lot took us a long time!


And here they are fresh from the kiln, I hope you'll agree that all that hard work glazing paid off!




And here's some close ups:









See you at the fair!

Two Part Mould Making

I don't know what happened to June, I seem to have misplaced it somewhere.

Unfortunately I haven't been at the studio much for the past month, when I have been however, fun things have been happening.

I tried a new method of mould making and documented it so I could show you.

It is a two part mould of a bird which will be a birdfeeder or tea light holder when finished.

To create the split in the middle of the mould I took the original sculpture and inserted flat plastic sheets all the way round the middle.






Next I mixed up some plaster to single cream consistency and dribbled it over the surface of the sculpture, this helps capture all the detail.





Then I waited until the plaster had set to a paste and spread it over the initial layer of plaster, it was a bit like icing a cake!



Then I waited for it to set.

About an hour later I was able to flip the entire thing over and remove the flat plastic leaving a lovely smooth surface.



Next I cut some registration holes into the plaster using an old knife. These will help align both sides of the mould when it's being used.
And then I painted a layer of slip onto the surface of the plaster. (lots of books etc recommend things like petroleum jelly, but that's so messy and can affect the absorbency of the mould if it gets on the wrong bits, so we came up with this method at Rework.)



Then it was time to repeat the plastering steps.
First the cream...



Then the paste...
Looks like a baked Alaska huh! X3



Then the whole thing was left to dry for about 2 weeks.

Today when I went in I could see the sculpture had dried out and shrunk away from the plaster, so I knew it was ready to open.



The original sculpture looks a little worse for wear, but once the mould has been tested, it'll be recycled anyway.



And that's about it, I cleaned up the mould and poured the first bird today. Hopefully be able to show you the results by next week. :)

I'm already preferring this method of mould making for a number of reasons.

- There is more control over the plaster. (No more plaster disasters... hopefully!
- It uses less plaster.
- The fit of the halves of the finished mould are much tighter than previous methods I've tried.
- The finished mould is lighter
- I can see the possibilities for making much more complicated moulds using this method.
 

Slow News Week

Things are slow as a ceramic snail here at the CCC at the moment. I've hardly had a spare moment to spend in the studio.

Last time I was there I noticed that the curious stoat sculptures seem to have been breeding. :)



It's hard to believe that last time I was at the studio is was glorious sunny weather, (It's been lashing it down non-stop the last few days here)
We picnicked outside for dinner and then took a tour of the grounds to see what we could find.


Buttercup


Speedwell


Buttercup


Dandelion

Monty Don's Real Craft - Pottery

Monty Don's whole Real Craft series has been fantastic but of course here at the CCC we've found the pottery one most interesting.

It's well worth a watch:
Monty Don's Real Craft - Pottery

I feel for those potters struggling with the fickle whims of the kiln.

I especially enjoyed seeing Monty Don having a go at slip casting since that is the CCC's main area of ceramics.
I think slip casting is often thought of as being easier and less hand crafted than thrown ceramics, but even that tiny glimpse into slip casting shows you it still takes a great deal of skill.
And that didn't even show the process of making the slip mould! (Something I shall be documenting here so keep your eyes peeled for that. ;))

Little Birds Running Wild

 It's about time I showed you how my Little Birds came out of the glaze firing!

Well here they are, a whole flock of Little Birds!


I have to admit the results of the glaze fire were rather mixed and not as good as I hoped. I'm not sure what went wrong, it's a combination of things including getting to know my kiln, some old glaze not firing right and my trying to be fancy when applying glaze. XD"

But where's the fun if you don't experiment right?



I wanted to have some with delicate green glaze, I tried one with the usual 3 coats and one I glazed and then wiped back to try and give it a more weathered look. Unfortunately neither worked out, both came out much too pale, I think this was caused by them being in a lower cooler place in the kiln as the same glaze fired fine higher in the kiln.



This red bird shows the worn back look I was trying to achieve with the green bird better, but I think the red colour is too strong in the end.



This poor fella was the worst one, The glaze did not fire well at all. >_<"



Finally a birdy that came out well!



The gold bummed and gold headed birds are definitely my favourite of the bunch!





And then there is a plain elegant white glazed bird. I did try and put a little colour to highlight the eye but it was that pale green which didn't fire properly so ah well.

So it has been an interesting experiment, next time I plan to try a few different things to hopefully get better results.

I'd love to know your thoughts on these first attempts tho! :)

Acorn in Action

With thanks to the lovely Pat for the photo (and buying an acorn feeder) take a look at an Acorn Birdfeeder in place!

I hope the birds are enjoying it! :)

Snail Obsessed?

Some could claim I'm a bit obsessed by snails.
All I can say is they are pretty awesome creatures!

Here's a snail I made earlier, it was one of the last things I made at Rework in fact.



I was rather pleased with how the shell worked out on him. :)



This fella's only little, but one day I hope to make a giant snail using the snail shell mould.