Mother's Day is just another day for me for the most part.  But my sister always tries to make it up to me.  These are the gorgeous flowers she bought me this year:

I will try and get better pics tomorrow.  I love my flowers!  Thank you sis!

So, this Spring, I took Beginner's Ceramics figuring Ceramics, easy breezy.  You pour slip into molds, bake, clean, pain, and glaze...NOT!!!  We hand built with clay the first half and used the wheel the second half.  It is HARD and TIRING.  Anyway, with that said, here are my projects, finished.

The first project we did was to simply take a piece of clay and squeeze it.  Once it dried and had been bisque fired we Raku fired it.  That is where you bring it up to about 2000 degrees for thirty minutes with a special glaze on it and then toss it immediately in a can of paper shreds that catch on fire.   Once they have been in the can for 20 minutes, you removed them and place them in water to cool.  It is actually a cool, if asthma inducing process.  Anyway, here is my first piece, on the right:
The other items, other than one, are my maquettes, or small models.  One is an onion, a pine cone, a flower, an apple and the final item is the leaf to my apple.


We had to make two eggs, one large and one small.  The large one, I used copper oxide on and then glazed it in hunter green.  I really like how it turned out.

Our small egg we Pit Fired, I hate it.  It is just burned.

We also had to make three teapots.  We actually made parts for teapots and then traded parts and built the teapots.  Here are the three I wound up with:
 


Then we learned to make cylinders on the wheel.  Here are mine:













Then we made a thrown and altered object and this is what I came up with:

This was also Raku'd.  I love the way it came out.  Everything on it is thrown including the handle.  Cool huh?

Thanks for indulging me!  Oh yeah. Last but not least, my test tiles.  Where we tested techniques.