Glazing The Moon!

 

How I glaze…The Moon!

When I first started making this dinnerware, I hadn’t planned on calling it…The Moon. I was actually thinking of a beachy-coastal theme, especially since I use a sea urchin to produce this texture. But when my husband first saw it, he said. “It looks like the moon.” So I went with it. It didn’t take very long to come up with some names like…New Moon, Full Moon, Moon Dust, Harvest Moon, Moon Shadow and Once Upon a Blue Moon. And I didn’t even have to buy new glazes, I already had everything I needed.

All the underglazes and glazes I need for this firing, are lined up for easy access. My brushes, and everything else I need is at my fingers tips.

I place old towels on my table to protect my pottery, it gives it a little cushion, and I don’t want to get wax on my table. It’s so much easier to clean up too. I just roll up the towels and throw them in the washing machine when I have a load. Now I’m ready to wash my plates.

I use distilled water for washing all of my pottery and for glazing. The reason I use distilled water, is because we have well water. There’s a lot of iron and lime in our water, and I don’t want it to affect my glazes.

The plates are all washed and drying. Once they dry, I’ll apply black underglaze to the bottom of the plates.

I use a small brush to apply the underglaze, so I can get inside all the cracks and crevices.

One coat is done, two more to go!

After all three coats are applied, I let them dry really well.

This is the part I’m not to crazy about! Washing (scrubbing) the black underglaze off and leaving it only in the cracks and crevices. I can’t even tell you how many times I need to change the water, or how long it takes! Lets just say, it’s a lot of work.

One more to go…Yay!

After all that scrubbing, here they are! All cleaned up and ready for waxing!

Once the wax is applied to the bottom of the plates, and they are completely dry. They’re ready for glaze. I use a fan brush to apply the glaze on the top of the plates, and a round sable brush for the rim.

And after three coats of glossy black glaze, they’re ready to load in my kiln.

This is what the bottom of the plates look like after they are fired. I love the way they look and feel!

And here they are…all finished!

I’ve been thinking about doing these in the beachy-coastal theme I was telling you about before. Creamy off white clay with beachy colors. What do you think?

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