SWIZ - Mugs 'n' Stuff....yep! More lamps (and some pendants).

Swizz!
The General Ra Ra's with the horns and tusks are great! Love that grungy and pitted glaze too.

Swizzers,

The stuff's looking good. Looks like you're having fun.

DON"T OPEN THE KILN TOO SOON! Patience you bastard. If you haven't gotten rid of the Coconut Bobs with the cracked glaze, put some more glaze on 'em and throw 'em back in the kiln. (cover them well with clear glaze). The glaze will probably fill in the cracks. Then just offer them for sale at a cheaper price and explain their flaws so people know what they're getting. That way they aren't a total loss for you.

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-04-08 10:54 ]

Swizzle that bowl is going to be awesome! I can't wait to see it glazed.

It must cost a boatload to ship things between Australia and mainland US!

I really like the logos, Robbie!

How'd you make that bowl so smooth? is it a casting? Did you throw it on a potter's wheel?

Bowie

My bet is that its a cast. It's hard to make one smooth on the potters wheel. Hey Swizzle that's one fried cat in black. I'm glad you are still having so much fun with glazes. Sometimes they torture me. I like being an angel as long as its one that is living on this planet. I miss you, Wendy

On 2013-04-08 06:27, Hale Tiki wrote:
Swizzle, I wondered the same thing for a long time. I got that mold many moons ago. It's supposed to be the bottom of his headdress.

Well that actually makes sense to me now.

Thanks MDM.

On 2013-04-08 10:53, GROG wrote:
Swizzers,

DON"T OPEN THE KILN TOO SOON! Patience you bastard.

Haha. I must admit patience is not one of my strong points although i learnt a valuable lesson by my mistake.

Thanks LoriLovesTiki. Glazed pics below. I'll be taking this bowl to the post office sometime this week to get a cost on shipping. My General Ra Ra's cost just under $30AUS to send and the Bob'O'Nuts are $40AUS when packed. I have no idea what this is going to be.

Thanks David. The bowl is a slip casting.

I miss you too Wendy. I'm hoping to make it back sooner rather than later.

Ok, so just a quick update. First is a pic of another batch of Bob'O'Nuts ready to go to their new owners. I tried to reglaze them as GROG suggested and it worked a little bit. Some cracks covered but others didn't. Fortunately it happened to work on the faces so you can only see the cracks on the inside. I also filled them with water and let them sit overnight and they don't leak, so that's a good thing.
The odd one out is what happens when you make custom pieces for friends who aren't actually into Tiki but want to support you. They choose their football teams colours.

Here's another couple of General Ra Ra's. Unfortunately i dropped one of them in my previous post and broke it so i decided to make another pair as the the one that survived is going to be traded with another Tiki Central member. (I'll post pics of what i'm trading for when they have finished the piece.) I also got to try out my new blue glaze.

And here is my new bowl after being glazed. I am extremely happy with how it came out. The rocks need a coat of clear on them but i don't have any brush-on clear and didn't want to spray it as i didn't want the clear going over the top of the other glazes and possibly affecting them. When i buy some i'll go over the rocks and re-fire it. Also, i'll be going about making any future ones another way. Instead of attaching the tiki to the bowl when it's wet i'm going to position it in it's place when it's been glazed and ready to fire and actually have the glaze fuse the two parts together. It was quite awkward to glaze and get into all the tight spots without making a mess so although it came out fine it will just be easier to do that way.

Cheers
swizzle

[ Edited by: swizzle 2013-06-08 04:47 ]

Swizzle,

I LOVE the bowl! Great job. And the Bob o Nuts are adorable. I don't know what the conversion is from AUD to USD. I'll have to Google that. I really would like a personalized one! Can you PM me a price quote? (I live in NJ, zip code 08831 if that matters.)

Maybe this will be my birthday present to myself this year! Last year it was a mug from Wendy!

Thanks!

That's a pretty blue. Good job on the bowl. Wendy

Go Swizzers, go!

Wow that bowl SINGS baby! I also really like your "Pele coated kitty" (the one that looks like it was caught in a lava flow). :)

I know I said it over on Instagram, but that tiki that came from the soap mold actually looks legitimate when in ceramic and glazed. It's a little modern, but it looks better than I've ever seen in that bowl!

Thanks Lori.

Thanks Wendy. It is a beautiful blue but it seems to have come out slightly different to when i used it last. I think it's because the base clay it was applied to is grey not white.

Swizz is going GROG. :D

Thanks tigertail777. SINGS is a good way to describe it. The colour combination works really well together i think. And i like the kitty too.

Cheers Hale Tiki. Although you say it looks a little modern it appears the design might have come from the 60's by a company called NAPCO.

Just a quick update. I had a handful of new glazes arrive so i did a few tests with them on my usual 'SWIZ' and 'Careless Navigator' logos.

I'm just posting this picture of the cat to show the difference in the glaze when it comes to shape of the piece. You can see that a lot of the black spots ran and left lines on the cat whereas on the both my logo and the CN one they stayed as spots as both those pieces were laying flat in the kiln when they were fired.

And i also glazed and fired another bowl. This was my original idea when i first made the mold, to join two of them together back to back and make a cavity in the top of the head for some overproof rum which you could light. After i pulled the first tiki from the mold it looked like the base with two joined together would be too large to fit inside the bowl but i gave it a go anyway and this is the result. It actually fits fine bit takes up a lot of room so you end up with a bowl that would only really hold one drink. I've thought about maybe carving away a couple of rocks so that the liquid can get inside the tiki and therefore hold more liquid/booze.

The rocks came out a lot darker than i was hoping. I had a little black glaze left in the jar and added some white to it but didn't do a test sample so it is nowhere near as light as i would have liked it. I also did as i mentioned in my previous post where i glazed the pieces seperately and let them fuse together. It worked fine.

(I usually take my pics outside but it was a miserable day here today so i had to take them under lights inside.)

Until the next time.

Cheers
swizzle

Cool stuff Swizz! The streaks on the cat are cool, add a little more interest than just spot would. Like the double faced Tiki too. That glaze fusing technique work well don't it?

The more I see the bob-o-nut mugs, the more I want one! Gah!

And thanks for the info, I just looked it up and found this thread:
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=22393&forum=5%20?iframe=true&start=0

And sure enough, those soap molds look to be exact copies of the Napco stuff! Maybe I might just have to break mine out again...

Nice new glaze, love your work, very clean and very nicely executed.

How did I miss these? You're doing a really great job. It's fun seeing a tiki cat too. Cool cat like you! Wendy

Thanks MDM. The glaze fusing works very well, i've used it several times since, including a piece it didn't quite go to plan on which you'll see coming up.

You might have been a little too slow Hale Tiki as Bob'O'Nut has been retired?

Thank you for the compliment hiltiki. Not all of my pieces all come out very clean though unfortunately. A lot of the time there is touching up and re-firing.

Awww thanks Wendy. I really wish i could have made it back to Oasis. Hopefully next year.

Well it's been a while since i last posted and i have made lots of things including a couple of new pieces. This post will be a bit of a photo dump and i'll try and keep the talk to a minimum and no go into too much detail. I'm also going to try and post everything in the order in which they were made but it might not be accurate.

First up is my Lance Corporal Stoney bowl. These first two i wasn't happy with the glazing, the orange one had a lot of glaze skips i covered up with the lava and the tiki on the grey one had a darker brown put over it. They both still have flaws but definitely look much better than they did. I'm going to give these ones to my friends.

This next one was a failure which ended up in the bin. This was the third variation i tried with this design and this is where i used the glaze fusing trick but it didn't quite go to plan. The fusing worked fine but the bowl slid and moved off centre on the tiki's head. After i took it out of the kiln i checked to see if the kiln was level and it is a tiny bit out so that could have been the reason why that happened but i'm not 100% sure.
I was disappointed as it had taken me a lot of time making that bowl (which also developed a crack during it's bisque fire which i repaired with Magic Mend-thanks MDM-but it reopened in the glaze fire anyway), however i was not going to give up so i made the piece again but this time carved a recess out of the bottom of the bowl so that it wouldn't move. This time it worked.

(In these pics you can see it's not centered.)

Here's the fixed version. Although i'm quite happy with it i won't be making another one. I liked the idea but it just doesn't look right and was too much work. It looks like he's wearing a sombrero. :D

After the bowls i made quite a few Bob'O'Nut's i had orders for. Some in the original colour i made it in and also a few custom ones. I also made a couple for myself on which i was just playing around with. Those few are up first.
At some stage i'd like to buy some gold or platinum lustre (that stuff's expensive) and do the eyes and mouth on the purple and black one below.

Robert'O'Nut the 3rd. He's a little fancy.

Bob'O'Rock, with a lava and rock like texture.

A gift/bribe. (It's not what you think :lol:)

This one is in my collection also. I tried a different brown and this is the result. I call him Hungover Bob as he's looking a little pale.

This isn't all the photos of all of them but on a few mugs i experimented with some different materials other than just brush-on glazes and this is a sample of what they look/looked like. I got some interesting results which i was surprised by and also happy with. Fortunately my customers were too. The first pic is one of the mugs without any clear on it and the other pics are what happened after a coat of clear was applied and it was re-fired. I think it's given it a real rustic look.

This is a group shot of nearly all of the variations i have made. I do have two more custom ones on order at the moment i've yet to start which will be quite different. I'll post pics of them when they're done.

Next are some stickers i had made with the logo i designed. After these were made i had a smaller version printed too. I also had some business cards made but i don't have a picture of them.

This weekend there will be a Tiki exhibition at Kustom Lane Gallery here in Melbourne. Besides a heap of Australian artists exhibiting, myself included, there will be work on display by several U.S. artists including, Tom "Big Toe" Laura, David Lozeau, The Pizz, Ken Ruzic and several more, including a few from Japan. I've been working hard to get a heap of stuff together and everything posted from here on will be going in the show, except for a couple of pieces i've already sold.

First is a few different colour and texture combinations of Lance Corporal Stoney.

I also sculpted a volcano and made a mold of that. It has two reservoirs for some overproof rum.

When i made the volcano i also sculpted a moai that i've made into pendants and also have added to some bowls i'm still working on. I also made a few new molds of the skull that you can find earlier on in my thread, and i have done the same with that. Made pendants and added it to some bowls.

Here's most of the pendants i've made so far.





Edition of 5 just for the show.

And here some pics of a new bowl i've been playing around with. I have more in various stages of completion including the one with the tapa style pattern. I've also made a couple of Lance Corporals with tapa patterning on them but the bowl pictured is the first one to be glazed and fired. It's name is Colonel Peek-a-boo for a reason that should become obvious.

And last but not least, with all the pendants i'd made i hadn't really thought about how i would display them so i whipped up a quick stand that holds 16 pendants and my business cards. I'm pretty happy with the result for a couple of hours work.

That's it for now.

Cheers
swizzle

Hi Swizzle, we did miss you at Oasis. Congratulations on being in an art show for tiki art. I hope we get to see pictures from that event.

What at treat to see all the pieces that you have been making. I watched for you to show up and you went over the top with eye candy. It's so much fun to see all the glazes and choices that you made for each piece.

This post is a big WOW! Wendy

Wow
Great stuff
U have been busy

Jon

Things can shift with the glaze fusing, you came up with a great way to prevent that. Love that volcano bowl, clean and elegant. You've got some great glazes going on too: Bob 'o Rock, the blue/grey LCS, and the green Moai pendant are some of my favorites. And yes, Oasis just wasn't the same without you :lol:

Swizzle, you have been getting better at sculpting and glazing. Your stuff is looking really cool! Thanks for sharing.

Great stuff. I like the Bob's. Best of luck with everything.

Thank you Wendy, hang10tiki, MadDogMike, lunavideogames and hiltiki.

So the exhibition went very well. I'm pretty sure it was one of the best opening nights the gallery has had in regards to sales. By the end of the night i'd say that about half the pieces displayed were sold. I was also very happy to have sold several of my pieces which basically paid for the two pieces i bought which you'll see below.

I didn't take many shots myself, i'm usually too busy socialising so i always forget to, but my phone has played up and the few that i did take i can't find at the moment anyway. The following pictures are taken from the gallery's Facebook page.

First are some pics of all my work.

The carvings are by Watango who you can find in Tiki Carving, there's some paintings by Mr.G. and the mugs on the left centre are by another Australian artist you'll see a pic of in a moment.

Some Tom 'Big Toe' Laura on the left and another Watango carving. There's a Little Lost Tiki on the back wall and he had more pieces around the corner of this pic on the left. On the right is a couple of David Lozeau's and one by The Pizz.

The three on the right are Australian artist Transylshania Sutton and the next two along are Paul Hughes, another Aussie. Not sure about the last two.

Not a great pic but the painting on the top left was amazing. I cant remember her name but it was a little out of my price range. The pics below that are another Aussie. I was really interested in one of those but when i finally made my mind up that i wanted it, it had sold. And the steel Tiki heads are another Aussies work, Justin Zahra. He does absolutely incredible steel work like the wood burner pictured. The three heads are lamps.

And here's a pic of Danielle Mann, who's mugs you could see in the earlier photo, myself and Marcus 'Tiki Beat' Thorn and Marcus's incredible carving.

And here are the pieces i bought. The one on the left is by MP and and the one on the right by an artist i can't say i'd ever heard of called Norm Daniels.

That's it for the exhibition. The following pics are more versions of my work seen in the last post.

A few more Colonel Peek-a-boo's.

Another Lance Corporal Stoney.

And another volcano bowl.

This volcano bowl i pulled out of the kiln today. I actually missed a bit when i glazed it so it was touched up and re-fired and when i pulled it out of the kiln today the big chunk you can see in the pic appeared and i have no idea why. The grey is underglaze with clear glaze over it and a brush-on red. It was perfectly fine there after the first firing although i did add a little more red for the second firing as it was a little thin so i'm wondering if that had anything to do with it. I got a tool onto it and scraped/chipped some more off it so i'll reglaze and re-fire it and hopefully it will come good but does anyone have any ideas of how/why it happened?

Next is the final two Bob'O'Nuts to be made from that mold. I was a little reluctant to make these as i wasn't sure how they'd work but i'm very happy with them both. The first fews sketches i did i just wasn't happy with and really didn't think a moko would suit him but after spending a little more time on it i came up with something both i and the customer were happy with. He received a lot of great feedback on Facebook.

Zomb'O'Nut.

Moko Bob'O'Nut.

I've also glazed several more skull and moai pendants but don't have any photos of those. The only new piece i have to show is this tile. They are all glazed with the same brown but the second and third pics have had the glaze scraped off the raised section and then had a lighter brown sprayed over the top. You can see it has darkened up the background compared to the first one.

And that's about it for the moment. Till next time.

Cheers
swizzle

Wonderful photos. I bet we all wish we were there. The Bob O Nut conversions are really fun. Good job as always, Wendy

Congrats on the great show Swizz! Your pieces all look very clean and nicely done.

Swizz,

I love Lance Corporal Stoney!

well, everything is great but I love him best. And the original Bob-o-nuts, I still want one of those!!!

Very nice.

Excellent gallery
and Excellent work in there!
Congrats Swizz!
:)

Outstanding...

Damn Swizzlers! Your stuff is looking great. Come glaze GROG' mugs you bastard.

I really love the colors on the blue/green/purple Colonel Peek-A-Boo and I really like that the volcano bowls drip down into a smaller basin. Great stuff! Good job on the exhibition.

Really love your work!!! Can't even pick out a favorite because it's all so fantastic!

I have to get one of those peek-a-boo skull bowls. Love all the pieces you posted--the glaze colors you use are some of my fav.

That gallery show looked great! How funny that you were in CA and you waited until you were in AU to buy an MP painting--I guess it DID save on shipping :)

A big thank you to to following people who enjoy my work and took the time to leave such kind words.

Wendy
MadDogMike
LoriLovesTiki (I'll be in contact about Bob'O'Nut)
Tikilizard
Kinny
hang10tiki
GROG (No! You mean i have to come glaze the work you're doing for me!?!?)
lunavideogames
Tiki Tonie
Sandra Dee (I have to message you too.)

Now i'm not posting this to steal any of Wendy's thunder, i can't really as it's not my work, but as she has been carving a bone dry mug for the art swap it reminded me that i had mentioned it a previous post but never posted a picture of one of my General Ra Ra mugs a friend carved. Wendy's mug looks fantastic but i'm sure a lot of you will be blown away, as i was when i saw what my friend had done to my mug. He actually uses a surgical scalpel to get the shapes and then carves the recesses away.

This mug is for his personal collection. He is the guy that made the bulls you can find pictures of on page 9 for which i did a trade. This is what he does to the bulls.

That is some serious talent, right there
Exceptional! what is your friends name again?

[ Edited by: Atomic Tiki Punk 2013-10-28 20:32 ]

Wow, I love what he did with your mug. I hope you got to keep it or one like it. It should be molded and shared. Wendy

His name is Murray Agrotis ATP but he is not a member of this forum nor does he have a website. You can find him on Facebook though. The funny thing is he is an amazing ceramicist and yet he calls himself an airbrush artist, which he is very good at too.

That mug is his Wendy. We did a trade where he gave me a few of the bulls for a version of each of my first mug design. We do plan on working on a collaboration at some stage.

Thanks, I hope you keep posting more of his work, someone to watch out for.

(I started this post last night and my computer crashed so i didn't come back to finish it. I have no idea why it posted. Edited to update it with photos this time.).

So since my last post i've pretty much been making different colour versions of my previous work although i do have a couple of new pieces which you'll see further down.

Instead of trying to remember and show posts in order i'm just going to post pics of each piece and the different versions/colours.

First a couple of Colonel Peek-a-boo's.

This one has a volcano from a new piece you'll see in a moment.

Next are a few more Lance Corporal Stoney's.

This one was a custom piece.

Kustom Lane gallery is moving to new premises and all Australian artists that have exhibited there before have been asked to contribute one piece for the opening exhibition and this will be mine. When i first made this design i had the idea to cut the mouth out of it and a section out the back where i could put a small aquarium pump and i finally got around to it. The pump fits ok but i had a lot of problems getting a hose to fit so that the water flows out the mouth. It does work but i'm going to have to play around with it to get it working exactly how i want. Unfortunately i can't post a video here so i can't show it in action although the last photo was taken with it running so you can just see the water in the mouth.

Hard to tell from the pic but the mouth is cut out.

This is a new piece i've made. Sometimes you don't want to share so who said you can't have your own volcano bowl. Brigadier VF1.

And here is another new design. I left the design fairly simple so that i could customise them if i want straight from the mold. So far i've only glazed a few but i have some more ready to go. Also, after glazing these few i removed a section from the mold as it was making it difficult to clean up the overspill of glaze when glazng the inside so the next lot to come don't have the curved recess (right up the top in the middle). He's not very big and although he is bigger than a shot glass, that is what it was actually designed for.
This is Corporal Punishment.

I also have made a few goblet versions using the Colonel Peek-a-boo bowl for the top and i made a seperate base to make it more stable. So far i've only glazed these two but have a few more ready. I'm quite happy with this design. The first one was a birthday gift.

This one i'm keeping.

That's it at the moment.

Cheers
swizzle

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[ Edited by: swizzle 2014-02-01 00:18 ]

[ Edited by: swizzle 2014-02-01 00:48 ]

I really love all the glazes you use on your mugs (the ones you post up on Facebook).

New work is looking good!

Thanks SandraDee. There should have been photos when you commented but it posted for some reason before i'd finished when my computer freaked out.

Wow
:)
Awesome

Now that's a real art show. Wendy

Great work here.
For me it's all about the glaze and details in these mugs.
Your mugs shine in these areas.
Don't know why some mug makers, many in fact seam to never get the cool glaze
thing down.
Great works!

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Thank you hang10tiki and Wendy.

And thank you too tikiskip. Admittedly i still have a lot of issues with glazing so to hear that is huge compliment. When it works i'm generally very happy with the results but unfortunately it doesn't happen as often as i'd like.

While i'm here this is the only thing i have to show at the moment. I haven't had any motivation lately, especially with it being summer here and i hate hot weather so i have a table full of bisqued pieces ready to glaze. There's also a bunch more Bob'O'Nuts stored elsewhere waiting too.

And i bought some beads and made another skull pendant. The first lot i made had a hole in the top centre and when you wear them they have a habit of flipping around so the next few i made i put a hole on both sides and now they stay put. And look much better too i think.

Cheers
swizzle

P.S. Thanks again for the kudos tikiskip. And everyone else who comments on my thread.

I agree with Skip. Really nice glazes. Very smooth and even. Airbrush, or an extremely deft hand on this man called swizzle??

Bowie

"especially with it being summer here and i hate hot weather"
I'll trade ya!
Oh what I would give for some hot, HOT weather.

"Admittedly i still have a lot of issues with glazing"
Yeah but ya don't show those.
Not every light I make is a winner.

Now get busy, we only have so much time on this world to make our mark.
PS I love that crusty barnacle look.

Love your Bob'O'Nuts.