Day 67

 Luminary

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Pink clay 25 % chamotte

Brown clay 25 % chamotte

unfired

Day 39

Plant pot with black pepper

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Burnished surface

Unfired

UPDATE: Fired

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Day 35

Pink crack bowl

This is one bigger pot with cracks from pink chamotte clay.

It will probably be for some small succulent garden.

It has simple oval form with lot of cracks.

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Pink chamotte clay

Unfired

Day 34

Meanwhile pot

This one cracked on the back side.

 It doesn't bother me but I hope it won't completely crack in firing.

I am slowly preparing myself for spring planting so I am obsessively

working on pots for cacti, succulents and herbs.
That is the plan for planting. For now.
But I can already see myself  going from the local market with 
a bunch of bags full of unplanned plants.

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 I am looking forward to more relaxed, fresh and sunny spring days!

This year forecast says it is going to be a very sunny spring

so the only thing left to do is to wait. :)

UPDATE: Fired

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Day 33

Plant pot

White clay with a little bit of pink.

I tried burnishing again. 

I started at the bottom with the back of a metal spoon.

Lower on the pot you can see how a metal spoon left a black marks on a clay.

So, I continued with the back of a ceramic spoon and it didn't leave any marks.

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I guess these marks are from the graphite in metal

 so it will burn away after the firing.

I burnished this just once.

UPDATE: Fired 

Day 32

Pinched vase

This vase is from a mixed clay, pink and white.

It is really nice and sweet, 

but it doesn't look so good on photos.

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I will take more photos after the firing so
I am hoping it will be better.
Pink and white clay
Unfired

UPDATE: Fired

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Day 30

Luminary

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Mixed two types of clay, pink and a little bit of white.

UPDATE: Fired 

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Day 27

Lidded jar

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The base is from the pink clay 

and the lid is from the brown.

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UPDATE: fired

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Day 22

Lidded jar 

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UPDATE: Fired

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Day 19

Cream jug

This is a small pinched jug.

I mixed some pink with white clay.

 Wonder what shade of the color will turn out after the firing.

I am hoping for some fine pastel tone.

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I was focusing on the shape so I wanted to keep it simple 

 with the texture

 and I think that I mainly succeeded.  

UPDATE:fired

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Day 18

Cactus pot

I started by decorating it with engobe. 

Same as yesterday, I will do some mishima.

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It's not finished yet.

UPDATE: Fired pot

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Same as yesterday, no mishima because 

it was difficult for me to sand the surface cause this clay is with chamotte and it started to break on the spots where I carved it. 

Day 17

Carved cactus pot

I carved the surface in a leather hard stage.

I got smarter from the other day when 

I carved it when it dried completely.

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I will probably do a mishima* here.

Basically, it's the inlay technique.

You can find more about mishima here.

*Mishima is a technique of inlaying slip, underglaze,

 or even clay into a contrasting clay body, the main clay body of the pottery piece. Creating a mishima piece basically involves six steps: creating the pot, incising the design, filling the design, removing excess material, drying the piece, and firing. "

UPDATE: Fired pot

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As you can see, I gave up from mishima.

 I like it this way :)

Day 15

Carved pot

I mixed together brown and pink clay and started with some simple shape.

I liked it that way so I left it to dry.

When it almost completely dried

 I decided to do some carving. 

Lucky me. 

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It turned out just fine but I could save some time and effort 

by doing it in a leather hard stage.

It would be soooo much easier. 

UPDATE: Fired pot

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Day 14

Hanging pink cactus pot

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UPDATE: Fired pot

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Day 5

                                                                 

Crack bowl

Today I started working with pink clay.

 I wanted to do some bigger and thinner pinch pot.

With chamotte clay that it's not so difficult because chamotte gives your clay the strenght.

The higher the percentage of chamotte is and the bigger the grain size is, 

the stronger the clay will be.

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This pink clay has 40 % of chamotte and the grain size is 0-0,5 mm.

At one point I added some white clay on the inside of the pot 

and I continued with stretching and shaping.

Eventually the cracks were formed and I liked the effect.

I continued with this process until the clay was too hard for stretching.

It cracked, but not much. 

This effect is something I could experiment with next time. 

Maybe I'll try to make bigger cracks on different clay.

UPDATE: Cracked during firing :(

Day 3

Hanging luminary

I love to work with pink clay. 

It has 40 % of chamotte so it's a little bit hard to shape in the beginning

but when you get a grip on it it's quite easy.

Chamotte clay dries faster than the regular clay 

and sometimes that's really good thing, especially when you're

 impatient or you don't have time to wait for it to become the leather hard.

I added some decorations in white clay and after I finished with it

 the clay was hard enough so I started to punch holes. 

I wanted to do something simple but...

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I was so into it that I exaggerated with all the holes and the texture in general.

 Not only that,

                                  I also added some manganese oxide to some of the decorations. 

                                           I intended this pinch pot to be hanging candle holder.

 I will leave it unglazed.

UPDATE: 
Fired piece without the decoration

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I didn't attach them very well and this pink clay dries a little bit faster from the white
so it fell off in the process of drying.
Nevermind, it looks just fine the way it is.