my creative space

The kiln was around 1000C this morning, so for once we got to see 'orange heat' through the peep hole;
We usually fire the kiln in the morning, so it reaches its top temps overnight, but this firing started late yesterday arvo, so it is still super hot this morning. All my pots could be glowing the same colour...how mental is that?!

I'm progressing with my lorikeet casting today. We use strips of old tyres as giant elastic bands to hold the two sections tightly together,
Pour the slip (liquid clay) in though the 'slip channels',

Leave it for about an hour, then remove the bands and pull the mold apart,
And this is what a fresh cast looks like! That funny line is called the 'seam'
They look quite ugly when they're fresh out of the mold, especially the the slip channel (or the 'spare') on their heads...!

After cutting off the spare, reshaping their heads and fettling the seams away, they look pretty darn cute!
I've got 2 sizes of birdies, I want to make 7 or 8 larger ones to perch along a branch or a piece of driftwood and hang from a window or the ceiling maybe and I'm thinking I could make a pendant from the smaller size...hmm...
I'll show you some painting birds next week, or maybe even tomorrow if you're lucky! Many thanks to the lovely Kirsty of Kootoyoo for hosting My Creative Space, I haven't been keeping up recently, so I'm happy to be back in the game this week!

2 piece

I made my very first 2 part plaster mold today! I'm (hopefully) going to make a small series of simple bird (well, rainbow lorikeet. Can you say tunnel vision?!) forms.

2 clay models half buried in clay to make the first half of the mold

Cottle boards up to hold the plaster

Clamps to keep the whole thing together

And my finished 2 piece mold!

The slip channel makes them look very strange, they will have normal shaped heads in the end...