let me show you my pottery skillz

Oh hello friends! 

Whilst packing EVERYTHING WE OWN I noticed that I had never posted pictures of the things I made in my ceramics class last semester! 

(did I tell you about that class?  about how I loved it and wish I had taken it 3 years ago cause I probably would have majored in it?)

I wanted to repair that grievous error before I packed all my projects away into boxes for a long summer's nap, so here are some photos! 

This is the pinch pot we made on the first day of class.  Notice how I call it a "pinch pot," and how my dish is...well...not a pot.  

Yeah, my hands kind of got away from me and everyone around me was just making little bowls...it was a bit awkward to be doing something different than everyone else (especially considering I have no ceramics experience) but I'm really happy with what I made! 

And...must I say it....recognize the shape much?  OBSESSIONNNNN,

Our second project in class was working on the wheel!  Let me tell you, that business is WAY more difficult than it looks.  The first class period I came home with sore arms and no success and all I could see was the wheel spinning around and around and around and around and around in my mind, taunting me!

Well, after awhile I started getting the hang of it and made our first project, these cups! 

The project was to make a set of three cups on the wheel and to hand build some handles for them afterwards.  The glaze is not what I intended--I wanted to use this pretty turquoise glaze but I put them on the wrong firing shelf so they fired at too low of a temperature. When they came back they didn't look right, and I didn't realize my mistake so I put a clear glaze over the old glaze to smooth things out a bit and then put it on the correct shelf....so the color that resulted is actually a strange mix of those two glazes.  And, it turns out that the turquoise glaze often releases chemicals when it comes into contact with acids, so we don't even use these for drinking :(  But I think they still turned out pretty cool looking and I'm happy to have them as shelf ornaments :D

Our second project was to make a set of three bowls. Can you tell that I had gotten better on the wheel at this point? ;)

I'm pretty proud of these.  And we use them all the time! 

After the bowls, we made teapots! I didn't go the traditional way and opted to not really make a spout...probably because of my obsession....

Cute though huh? 

Our last project was to make some sort of animal.  I wasn't really sure what to make but I knew I needed to know what it looked like from every side in order to create it, so I got the idea to use one of the animals from this game I have called Zen Bound.  In it, you wrap a rope around an object and the rope puts down paint on the wooden surface as it goes.  The idea is to turn the object so that the rope wraps around and around and covers the whole surface before you run out of rope.  Anyways, in the game, the items are 3D and you turn them around in every direction to get the paint to cover them, so you can see every side--which I figured was perfect for using to sculpt! 

Here is the animal in the game:

It's a hedgehog! 

And here's what I made:

As you can see, I may or may not have painted him to look like Sonic the Hedgehog...cause how else was I going to paint him? ;)  

See his little red and white feet? This one is completely hand-built, meaning I didn't make any part of it on the wheel.  I used a mold to create a dome for the top of his body, then rolled out a slab of clay to be his underbelly.  I made his face next and then his feet, let him dry a bit so the feet could support his weight, and then added all of his scales!  It was a really fun project because it turns out I REALLY like hand building and because I got to use lots of different techniques to make him! Anyways, most of my other classmates made super cool but pretty literal animals, so it was fun to do something a little more abstract. 

So that was all of our projects in class, but the problem with this class is that after every class I'd go home and lie awake thinking about all the cool things I wanted to do that weren't projects...and wonderfully, we were allowed to buy as much clay as we wanted and come in to use the studio anytime, so I made some things for fun! 

I wanted to make a teardrop dish like my pinch pot, but using a glaze that was food safe so I could use it as a salad bowl, so I made this! 

Towards the end of class, I wanted to play on the wheel a little more, so I made some flower pots! 

yep.  I like them a lot. 

Aaand....this is the one I'm really proud of.  It's not perfect but I LOVE the concept.  

It's intended to be a vase--the bottom 3 inches intentionally don't have holes so that it can hold water, but the pattern on the top allows you to see the stems and light! 

Yeah...I can't make any other shape!  This piece really was the most fun though, and is part of the reason I wish I had been able to do more of this kind of thing!  

Hopefully, in the future, I can find a studio somewhere where I can pay to use the kiln and such and do this some more!