The NorthWesternBelle

Hand-drawn mandala designs are my favorite way to decorate clay Hey, y'all! My first batch of mandala plates came out of the kiln last week, and I am so pleased with them. There were seven dishes and two ring cones in this latest batch, and they are all for sale! As of the original publishing of this post (Feb 2018), I haven't listed them on Etsy yet, but that'll happen soon. So, if you want to scoop one or more of  these beauties up for $18 a piece* beforehand (free domestic shipping!), details about ordering are at the end of this post. Rings not included. Blue #1: *This one is $15, due to the lack of mandala design Blue #2 Blue #3, deeper than the other two. The Celedon blue turned out really well on all three of these dishes this go round. It has been very thin lately, so I was careful to get two solid coats on, and well into those carving lines. Clear #1 Clear #2 Simple clear glaze never fails to disappoint on these hand-carved mandala...

ICYMI: I covered all the big news in Issue 1 of the NWB Monthly Newsletter last week.. I was able to spend about six hours total in the studio last week, which is triple the time I have been averaging per week. It was so awesome. I got so much accomplished. Nearly too much, to be honest, because I'm going to be burning through clay at this rate. I plan to recycle as much as I can to be efficient, but it is still $20 per 25 lbs, and I don't love working with anything less than 2 lbs at a time. Tuesday night is my regular class, which runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. I got to the studio around 2:30 and was there until 6:40, because it was also Halloween. It was also a potluck, to which my awesome teammate brought tasty beer! So tasty! In those hours I trimmed a set of square bowls that I had thrown two weeks previously. Their altered forms and a bit-too-dryness complicated matters, and two of the five did not survive. One cracked at the rim, the other flew off the wheel whi...