Post #662568 by swizzle on Sat, Dec 29, 2012 1:10 AM

Thanks Mike, Scott and VampiressRN.

Thank you anthonymaye.

Thanks Tom for liking my mugs enough to purchase some from me. The drama getting them to you was quite entertaining though i must say.

Thanks Wendy. It feels good having my own kiln knowing i can fire stuff whenever i want to.

Well since my last post i have had the kiln wired up and have done a couple of firings which i'll get to later.

First up is a few more of my General Ra Ra mugs. A couple of months ago we had another get together at the Tiki Lounge and Bar here in Melbourne and i made a few mugs to take along and sell. If you've been following my thread you'd be aware that there are two versions of my mug which i call V.1 and V.2. With this batch of mugs i decided to detail and glaze both V.1 and V.2 in the same style and colour to make a matching pair. I did this with three pairs and there were 4 other 1/1 mugs to make up 10. Now this was the last batch of mugs i had fired where i buy my ceramic supplies from before i bought my kiln. And as Murphy's law would have it, this was the first time i had any real dramas using a community kiln and it had to happen with only a couple of weeks before the show.

I won't go into all the details here but there was some sort of powder or something in the kiln (which my mugs happened to surround) which when the kiln was fired, this substance fused itself onto some of my mugs, damaging them. There's no need for me to explain what happened, you'll be able to tell from the photos, but as luck would have it, there was one mug from each pair that got damaged. So i unfortunately i didn't actually end up with a 'pair' of the matching mugs i was hoping for.

The pics below will show the mug that survived, it's 'pair', and the damage on it, and then the damaged mug repaired the best i could. The only way i could try to fix them was to glaze over where this substance had fused to the mug and hope that it covered it when it was refired.

These two mugs i didn't know what to do with and just left them. Because of the glaze colour the damage wasn't as noticable. :lol: One friend really didn't care and actually liked it so he bought one, at a reduced price, and the other i just gave to the owners of the bar.

These two mugs were the only other ones that came out unscathed.

Next up is the first few pieces i have fired myself in my new kiln. These are effectively tiles, or you could use them as a drink coaster. As i have put holes into them i'm going to thread some rope through them and hang them up on the wall. The first one is a logo i designed for my Tiki user name, the other my friends logo. (Before anyone asks, i made a mold from something for these that i'm keeping as my little secret. Sorry.)

The following two pieces are not related to Tiki in any way at all, but i thought i'd show them regardless. I became friends with a guy recently who is actually an airbrush artist but also does ceramics. I gave him two of my mugs, a V.1 and V.2, in greenware which he is in the process of modifying. I've seen some progress pics on Facebook and they look AMAZING. I'll post some pics here when he's finished them.
Anyway, in exchange for my mugs he gave me two of these bulls to do with what i want. He actually pours them really thick and then carves detail out of them with a scalpel (that's what he's doing to my mugs) but these two weren't thick enough for that so he said i could have them. The mold itself is from the 50's or 60's and the castings he gave me were bone-dry greenware still with the mold lines on them. As the mold is so old it leaks a lot so i had to spend a couple of hours cleaning them up. Then i glazed and fired them, the very first pieces to be done in my new kiln.

The first one i gave to my mum for Christmas (her star sign is Taurus), the second i'm keeping for myself. After the first one came out exactly as i wanted, i went a little crazier on the second. I really was expecting the glazes to bleed, especially the blue, but i was so happy when i opened the kiln this morning.

And last but not least, yes, i finally have made a new mug. It's not what i had pictured to be my second mug but as i've only made two molds before, and that was about 18 months ago, i decided to start of with something simple so i chose a coconut. Now as there are dozens and dozens of coconut mugs around i had to put a twist on it, and what better than my favourite Tiki, Tiki Bob. :lol:
Those of you that know me, know that i'm really not a fan of Tiki Bob so this mug was made out of complete sarcasm. He is starting to grow on me though, seeing that you cannot escape him and especially with all of Wendys fanatstic variations. There have been lots of different versions of Bob made but after looking through the pages of Ooga-mooga i'm proud to release, what looks like the first version of Bob as a coconut.

So without any further ado, ladies and gentleman, i give you "Private Bob 'O' Nut".

I need a cup of tea and a lie down after all that.

Cheers
swizzle