Trial, Error & (finally) Success

                                                     by Kelli Pope

Last week I showed you my MASS stock of clay beads and pendants.  This week I thought I'd run you 

through a firing.  

After bisque firing the whole batch,  I came across a box of  glazes I'd purchased last year. 

I had found a new website that carried black clay (my favorite after firing) and had a sample pack of their own glazes that worked on that specific black clay.  If any of you have worked with black or red clay, you know not all glazes work on it.  It's trial and error.  Using theirs, I thought, would remove the "error".  Wrong!    I received the BEAUTIFUL silky black clay, which was a dream to work with.  I produced a mass stock of beads, pendants, bisque fired them, and glazed them in my new glazes.  I was shocked and disappointed to open up my kiln to a full load of brown.  Yep.  Brown.  EVERYTHING.  No color.  I researched the sellers site, even called them to get some tips.   I re-glazed, re-fired. Still various shades of brown.  I tried washing my bisque before glazing, changing temp settings, hold time, preheat, etc, etc...........   Brown beads.  UGH!!!  HOW disappointing.  

So, as I started to glaze this latest batch, I decided I would see if those same glazes would work on my buff stoneware clay.  I glazed about 3 beads in each color, and did a test run. 

      Last night I loaded up the bead trees with my samples. 

And this

morning

awoke to 

find...............

 COLOR!!!!

 YAY!!!!    SO exciting!   

                          This is just a small dose of what's to come.   And won't they all look LOVELY 

paired with.................. 

 my hubby's torch enameled headpins!!!!   :o)