Triaxial Triumph

You waited? 

Are you excited?
Well, i hope so because photographing this tiles was a tremendous pain in the rear! For one, I picked a shiny glaze, a matte glaze, and a crawling semi shiny glaze as my base glazes for this. So when I tried to photograph it the light would look wonderful of NEARLY all the tiles except the super shiny ones! so unfortunately the extreme awesome colours and effects on the tiles is masked by a heck of a lot of shiny glare marks....and in some cases, the beautiful colourations just wouldn't photograph for me! but i tried real hard so maybe you can imagine that the colours are ten times better in person, alright?

So for my three bases, which i mentioned, i picked a matte turquoise, the semi-shiny crawling purple i created, and an old friend from a previous project....a shiny honey brown jun glaze with opaque streaks.  I tested all 21 glazes on both red and white tiles and  they were fired to a perfect cone 6! 

My First Triaxial Blend

Beautiful ain't she? ahh....so i paired each tile with it's matching red tile friend so the difference in colour on the different clays could be seen. You can also sorta see how the shiny glaze was more dominant over the matte, only a few of the tiles came out completely matte (actually some were matte and broke shiny! very interesting...). Each point of the triangle was the original base glazes: the top is the semi-shiny crawling purple, lower left is the matte turquoise, and lower right is the honey brown jun glaze.

White Tiles Alone

Red Tiles Alone

I also separated the tiles into white and red triangles so the colour change could be better observed. You can probably see what i mean from the dramatic colour differences between the photos that the photographs didn't keep the colour true. Plus, a lot of the dark glazes on the red tiles have very subtle colours in them that i could not capture in a photo. like the two tiles at the top, right below the very top one. those two tiles have a bit of the crawling effect, but it's glazed over and not broken at the surface, the crawling pieces are a lovely metallic silver on one tile and a metallic gold tint on the other. it looks like sparkles hidden under a clear glaze, very beautiful in person.

Some of my favourite results

I tried a photo of some of my favourite mixes, which turned out...alright, but still lacks all the lovely little details that make them my favourites. Such as the very middle glaze in that photo, the one that looks very blue, in person that glaze has lovely opaque streaks that are light blue but break pink at the end! the streaks make the glaze look fluid, but there was little movement from any of these glazes.

Oh happy day. I will probably have more to say on this, and possible more photos later on, but for now I'll have to end this.
Hope you're enjoying my glazes :)
Cheers~

Turquoise Testing

So Busy! I thought reading week would be a nice break but it's been just as busy as a regular week of school, minus the scheduled class hours. I'm a little lagged in terms of what experiments I'm posting, but I'll be adding more posts over this week.

So the test I'll be showing you  is the turquoise glaze i wanted to use for my Triaxial. In the experiment the glaze required some Epson Salts, which I'd never used before, so i tried the test both without and with the salts to see what difference it would make. Actually, it might quite the difference in terms of how the glaze turned out on the tiles. It was supposed to thicken the glaze itself, but after adding it i didn't notice a difference, but on the tile it was obviously thicker.

Tiles to the left of each pair
have the Epson salts

The interesting part was actually on the reverse side of the tiles where the glaze ended up being thicker...somehow. Usually i only take a photo of the front of the tiles but this time....YOU GET BOTH! don't you feel super special? Anyways, without the Epson salts the glaze came out super thin and dark as well as uneven and kinda lumpy. On the red tile the glaze became blistered and rough. However, on the tiles where the Epson salts had been added the glaze was more even over the whole tile and the colour came out beautifully. 

 

Two tiles to left have added Epson salts

I found it rather interesting, this glaze had both Bentonite and the Epson salts, both being suspenders, but with only the bentonite the glaze didn't stay in suspension. I didn't think that having the tiny 1.0% of Epson salts would make a difference, but it did, a really big difference! Even when thick the glaze didn't show any signs of moving although the recipe did warn to not get the glaze too thick or it would move. Actually, i rather liked it when it was applied a bit thicker, but not really as thick as it got on the reverse of the tiles.

Now, at this moment I do have all  the results of the triaxial test, they're lovely, BUT....I want to have time to analyze the results i got and to photograph it properly (there are 42 tiles....i can't photo them like i have done these other little tests). So until I have time to look over the test and photo it, you get teaser pictures of the test in progress~!

I was VERY organized when mixing the 21 glazes
as you can  clearly see...a little OCD..

 ....and maybe one more? All 42 tiles waiting patiently to go into the kiln, they went into the big ConeArt kiln this time since there was so many of them.

So many tiles...

Well, until next time
Cheers~!

...Like a Bowl of Jello

So, let's begin this post with some random chatter. This week has been a pain in the butt! I wanted to come in and glaze so much, but my large drawing project (about 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide) was demanding attention and my hip kinda gave up working (in short, I was born with hip dysplasia, it acts up at times...and when there are huge storms). So Wednesday was pretty much the day i spent on my bed, with muscle relaxer medication, feeling like a blob of jello. I bet you can guess where this is going eh? yeah, i wasn't able to get much glazing done this week...i feel bad. HOWEVER, I am not in short supply of new pictures to show you!

Last week I mentioned I did a glaze test with the crawling glaze where i turned it purple. well....the glaze ended up more of a deep...periwinkle colour, but it's super neat! I did add a bit of Rutile to the test to see if i could get anything interesting....it muted the colour a bit on the white tile and made the red tile super shiny and blended the crackly bits in, which looks pretty epic~   

Purple Crawling Test
two tiles to the left have no added Rutile

   

I love how the red tile turned out in both tests, and the white tile with no rutile is a great colour, but it might look even better with a dark glaze or even a good contrasting glaze colour underneath! or maybe a slip...something there so when the crackle cracks you get a peek of something underneath. oh, and that turquoise glaze is is in the kiln, and may i add Epsom salts made me rather excited. Not sure why. I rather enjoyed mixing the teenie tiny cup of water with the salts.

Should I be having this much fun when mixing glazes?

...is it unhealthy? oh well...

READING WEEK~! I'm doing my Triaxial! STAY TUNED!

Cheers~!

Where's The Lithium When You Need It?

#4 to #8 Line Test 1 Re-Test:
Top row is original test
 bottom row is new test

Alright,

        so this week feels a little packed. midterms, big projects flailing around and a little bit of emotional trauma in my personal life. I tried really hard to get in and do some more testing and was doing well until i found we had no more Lithium Carbonate...halfway through mixing a glaze. But I'm not empty handed! I did do three tests. This first test was to retest the center tiles in my previous line blend, tiles #4 through #8 to see if the colours were consistent. This time the kiln turned off! and i got a perfect cone 6 so I know if i were to fire them again at cone 6 that the colours are correct.
                

Another view of re-test, tiles on left are new test
tiles to the right are original test

 Oh and the kiln gods did say, it shall be consistent, and it was~!

Heh, but yes, the colours are pretty much the same minus some of the tiles which came out a little more blue than green in the thicker areas, but that's pretty minor. I took pictures in two different ways so it's easier to compare them, either as a line or individually side by side with their matching tile. I'm happy with the results and very impressed by this shiny clear glaze! it's being VERY versatile, i mean, it fired to cone 8, didn't run, didn't melt, didn't discolour! it's super fun to play around with as you'll see in my next couple tests..... teehee.

The next test i did was to try and make the glaze opaque since it was originally a clear glaze. When it is opaque it's easier to see the colour on the red body, because the red body is bothersome and likes to eat all the colour so you only see the red body. bugger. BUT HEY~ That's okay, because we love the red body don't we? it's so pretty all on it's own. So, continuing, i added some Tin Oxide to the recipe in increments of 2% up to 6% and tested it on both bodies. That's not all though....after a very interesting talk with Scott (Ye Technician and Ceramics Prof) he got me thinking of different surfaces, besides just a shiny glaze. With a good internet check and a quick read through Robbin Hopper's book  I added a whole lot of Magnesium Carbonate to the recipe.....and well...

Opaque and Crawling test. Left to right increased amount of Tin
Oxide by 2% to 6% on each body

 

 

You like? I like~ The crawling is very interesting on both clay bodies. I found that over 4% Tin Oxide was just over kill, it didn't make the glaze more opaque, so 4% will be what i use. Now, for the next test (I don't have pictures yet! sorry...they're in the kiln still) I'm taking the 4% Tin crawling opaque glaze and adding some colour to it! After looking over my poll it seems purple is winning so that's what it'll be!(it might be a little more mauve/pink, but that's close). The other test i was trying was a turquoise matte glaze, but it needs Lithium Carbonate..aaaaaaaand...we were all out. So i have to be patient and wait for more before i can continue making that glaze. 

I can wait, it just means the line test i wanted to do is being pushed back more. It makes me anxious since i wanted to get my triaxial blend started. It'll be a busy reading week, I'll tell ya that.

Anywho, It's time to sleep!

Cheers~!

OH! YOU DIDN'T MELT!

The melted cone pack......nice.

Let me begin by sobbing happily....the test tiles survived, at least in one piece, and the glazes, well....mostly worked (Although whose to say they'd come out the same colour if fired correctly, huh?). The cone pack really says it all. The cone 5 is completely melted to a point where it was adhered to the shelf it was sitting on and its completely smooth, no crease like the other two cones. Beautiful....

Onto the test tiles! They didn't melt, which makes me super happy, but they did dry out to nasty feeling things...like sandpaper..but worse *sigh* . The glazes on the white tiles came out interesting enough but the red tiles all came out the same colour...a deep...black...brown (how disappointing). For this sake, I only took pictures of the white tiles to show ya, since the red ones were just...sad. But the white ones look good! The blend is so...so very blendy. More blendy than I thought it would end up, it's almost like paint mixing part by part which I assumed wouldn't occur.

Line Blend1- left to right- Cobalt to Iron

The most interesting colour happened around the half and half point in the middle. The mixture made this lovely metallic grey blue that has a nice warm tone to it. It's defiantly a colour I would be interested in using if I could recreate it and it isn't simply a result of the over-firing that happened. I would be interested in simply retesting the center glaze to check and see, good thing I kept all eleven glazes...

Onwards to the next test~! Huzzah~

Colour Testing and The First Line Blend

The Colour Test- left to right: Copper, Cobalt, and Iron.

 Ah. The first weekly update....good times.

Actually no. Not good times. Tragic times. But I will get to that in due time....

To start, I begin my testing with a simple colour percent test to see the results of the colour saturation when the percentage is varied. Using a simple base I tested Copper, Cobalt and Iron (more specifically Copper Carbonate, Cobalt Carbonate, and Crocus Martis) between 1-2% for Copper and Cobalt and 2-6% for the Iron.  The test went well and the results were interesting, or at least to me. The tests were easy enough to do and I have to say the Iron test did what I thought all the tests would do, but they did not, which only makes me want to do more colour testing~! However....I have more tests to try so that will just have to wait.

Line Blend 1-Before the kiln

Continuing, from this test I picked two of the glazes, Iron at 4% and Cobalt at 2% and made them duel it out in a line blend. For this test I used a set of white tiles and a set of red so I could get more results (22 results to be exact). But this is where the tragic times comes in. I set my tiles in the test kiln Thursday around 7:00pm, at 5:00pm this evening I went to collect the tiles to see my results and the kiln was red hot. The latch that drops and stops the kiln so it can cool, never dropped. So my tiles stayed red hot for gosh knows how much longer than needed! I'm anxious to know if they are ruined...and if so I might be redoing the test....AND if so I might be begging for forgiveness for ruining a kiln. I wont know until tomorrow evening after I get off work and I know I'll be tied in knots until then.

Kiln gods were not smiling down on me today...