All posts tagged: clay

work hard, clay hard.

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The September craft night at Jenny Lemons was all about clay! It was also my Mommy’s birthday so she and my sister joined craft night, too. Our instructor was Faye Kendall, a fiber artist based in the East Bay; she walked us through how to make air dry clay mobiles. Jenny Lemons shipped over clay and an India ink pen. We gathered additional items like a rolling pin, a mat/cover for our workspace, and toothpicks or other utensils for making marks and cutting. First, a lesson in clay. Then, how to create slats with cardboard to get a even thinness across your clay. We then rolled out our clay. I used a dowel. Some used actual rolling pins or glass bottles. Faye demoed carving out shapes and creating holes in our mobile pieces. We had to wait for the clay to dry before we could paint and assemble our mobiles. While we continued to create shapes, Faye used the rest of class to talk about design and where she draws inspiration from, as well as …

glazed and confused.

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I went back to Play with Clay for the second step in my clay creations: glazing. We found our pieces on the student shelves. Looking good… We had a lesson in glazing, marked our pieces with our initials, and picked out our glaze colors. There were lots of colors and color variations to choose from. I went with more green/blue shades and decided to layer my colors to look like the tile glaze samples. In it’s liquid glaze form, the color is not the final color, which is kind of confusing, but that’s science for you! My pieces will match the tile samples after another fire in the kiln. I love glazing! It’s so simple and satisfying. I only had three pieces to glaze. I wish I had at least a dozen more pieces to dip. 🙂 After a second fire, here are my final pieces! My favorite of the three is the one on top. They turned out thicker than I was hoping for – something to work on should I do this again! …

clay.

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I took a clay wheel class with my crafty friend Connie! It was so fun! First we had a tour of the studio – there’s a wheel room, decorating room, drying area, kiln space, glaze room, and show room. There’s even a a window area where used clay can lay out to dry so it can be used again. Classes are kept small – there were six of us in class. Our instructor gave a demo of how to throw a piece, then we all made a piece together. She made sure we all had correct posture while using the wheel. Then, we had maybe 20 minutes of open play. I even got to try the wheel the left-handed way (spins clockwise instead of counter clockwise). I made three pieces total. Once we finished on the wheel (and cleaned up our stations), we moved to the decorating room where we added texture and designs to our pieces. Here, you can add handles, spouts, holes… It helps if you know what you want to make going …

ceramics.

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I took my first class at the Jenny Lemons shop! My friends Sarah and Connie and I took ceramics with Viv of Mud Witch. (PS When you sign into your first class Jennie hands you the cutest punch card – a fruit punch card. OMG so smart!) Viv taught us about different types of clay, how to handle the clay so it doesn’t explode in the kiln (important!), and how to build our pieces. We each got a slab of calico clay and started off with a basic pinch pot. My nails were too long so I had to get creative in my pinching technique. There were different tools available for smoothening out, scoring, flattening, and cutting our clay, too. We learned to score and attach pieces of clay together, and that using too much water can dry out the clay. We learned coil building, too, which seems like it might be an easy skill to pick up, but it is very time consuming. When we liked the shape of our pieces and if they …

all the crafts!

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There were so many classes to choose from at Craftcation – over 50 for each day! Most required pre-registration, but there were others that were drop-in and you could also get waitlisted for classes, too. Here are a few I got to take on a whim! Each day there were casual crafts set up poolside – what a lovely setting! They were less structured and more open play; you could stay for as little or as long as you wanted. I taught one of these casual sessions (my mini succulent terrarium craft) and attended two others: terrazzo jewelry (above) with Jennifer Perkins and fabric dye coloring pages (below) with friend roomie Rebecca! I don’t play with clay much so it was fun to learn a trendy technique – I would love to create some clay beads and charms to use in my pomtass crafts. For fabric coloring, we used rainbow patches and Jacquard liquid color. I’m thinking I’ll make a mini plushie with my rainbow patch. After teaching back-to-back classes, I still wanted to make …

play with clay.

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It’s time to play with clay! I hadn’t touched clay since maybe high school and so I had very low expectations for what I’d end up making at the evening’s festivities. All I knew was that with resident maker Terri teaching, it would be a fun and supportive environment! First off, clay feels amazing. It’s cool to the touch and has soothing properties the moment you place some in your hands. I felt very much at ease as I rolled, molded, and mushed the clay. We first started our lesson by making pinch pots and learning how to feel for the thickness of the clay and how to tell if the clay was being overworked. I also ended up making a larger bowl made of circles. Some of us were in the advanced class and made more than just bowls. Check out this mask! We still need to let these pieces dry before firing and glazing. I’m looking forward to painting my pieces and then using them as functional works of art! Have you played …