kswan

An iron oxide wash will work, I've done that before. If it's too thick it might sinter a little bit.

What a neat idea! I assume these will be buried which is why you want them to be able to degrade. You could possibly try melted beeswax to coat them? That would certainly biodegrade too. If you have a small piece of that clay leftover, you can use that to try out different things, like maybe vegetable oil too.

I've noticed this sensation too! I also use B Mix 5, and have a few pieces made by a friend out of Standard's 112, and it definitely feels lighter in weight for a similar thickness of clay. I compress and rib off all slip which may also contribute to this. But I also had an aha moment when I was filling sandbags. I was running out of sand and went to the store to get more. The new sand was not just sand but dusty particles as well. I filled my sandbag to the same level as the previous ones and it weighed several pounds more. All those little bits filled in the space between the bigger sand particles. I was thinking this is maybe similar to how clay particles of different sizes might fit together too.

There is one for sale listed on the Peter Pugger website under reconditioned equipment.

The ones you listed are all 16 cubic inches, which I think would be pretty small unless you make almost all small work. You may want to go for a bigger size so you wouldn't have to buy another later if you make bigger work. I made something for myself out of PVC pipes and a thin polyester fabric shower curtain. It's about 3 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. It sits on a table. I have 2 lights on tripods on each side, and one light that I can hold in front, above or put on a tripod too. The thing I spent money on was a Flotone sheet. There are lots of ways to make a light setup yourself if you're interested. I think with ceramics, being able to adjust the angle of the light hitting your piece is important. You can move the light around to eliminate hot spots and get better shadows and such. I was glad to take a photographing ceramics class, which helped me to be able to see those things I wouldn't have noticed or known how to deal with before. Diffusing light is important for shiny glazes. I don't have any info on using a premade lightbox, but I think you might want to also have some other light source that can be moved around in addition to the one mounted in the box.

This is a bit different from the topic I think, but I'm planning to see the Majolica Mania exhibit at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore sometime soon. I don't get out to museums or anywhere much anymore, so it will be nice to see a ceramics exhibit and be outside my house for a while.

@Hulk What do you use the earmuffs for? Are they better than the foam ones? I use the foam ones when I'm using my dremel and other tools like that. (I think I ought to use them for our coffee grinder too, I have to cover my ears!) I also have a little changing station near the stairs where I put on and take off pottery clothes and shoes. None of them go upstairs into the house. I wear my respirator when I'm cleaning up and turn my HEPA air filter on. It sits on a top shelf and has a timer. If I'm stirring dust up while cleaning, I want the filter to catch it. Then it turns off after a couple hours. I don't know if that's the best system to use, but I can see that it's working when I change the filters. Not necessarily for safety, but I got some awesome big LED panel lights put in. They are a bright white so I feel like I can see things pretty clearly.

I've come to realize that I like handbuilding maybe more than wheel throwing. Every class I've ever taken was on a wheel, so I just puttered with making things from slabs until I got the hang of it. Coil building looks interesting for making large items, but I fear I'd end up with a lumpy mess.

I quit rock climbing because of repeated injuries to my shoulders and tendons in my forearms, so I am careful not to overdo it when I work with clay. @Jeanetta some of those stretches are warms ups we'd do for climbing too. I don't work at this totally full time which helps, and I vary what I do in the course of a day to give my body a break. Climbing was much harder on my body than clay could ever be, except for hurting my back! Sometimes I feel like I ought to switch to woodturning instead of making ceramics! I could still create utilitarian pieces with creative touches, but I could gather my materials from my own surroundings and it would eventually biodegrade. In terms of "shortages", we have a finite amount of natural materials that are mined from the earth to create our pottery. I feel guilty about the waste that happens when something goes wrong and a fired piece needs to be thrown away. I also don't like the electricity use and toxic gases that are produced. I can dream about a solar powered kiln someday when I live somewhere that gets more than an hour of sun. But I am like @Pres in that I feel a mental uplift from working with clay and get excited by new ideas and good results. I try to compensate for my carbon footprint by doing what I can in other ways in my life, and I tell myself that giant factories around the world are doing much more in terms of pollution, energy and resource consumption than I am. Is it okay to rationalize like that? I want to add that ceramics challenges me in many ways, with its physical construction, the chemistry involved, the myriad ways to create, decorate, and finish. There doesn't seem to be anything else like it.

@Mark C. I'm glad you have Godzilla to help you in your studio! I look at my Square tallies after each show and am surprised by the categories where things sell best and price averages at each show. That's helping me a lot. I do make a list for myself from that as to what I need to make more or less of. I wanted to share what I've tinkered with so far on Trello. I am only going to use this for special orders and not for regular inventory that I'll make. This is very simple and I barely did anything beyond the stock page, but at least it's all in the same place. I love making to do lists, and it's nice that you can make a template for an order including the to do list and then adjust as you need to. Also, @Callie Beller Diesel it looks like you get payment after the piece is made. The people so far who want special pieces from me are ready to pay as soon as the idea is drawn up. Is it standard to have a policy about upfront payment, down payments, etc? Or can that be up to the artist/buyer?

I am nowhere near the volume of work that you all are doing, so I am enjoying the fact that people are excited about my work and I have time to make things for them. I'm no longer in a gallery so doing craft shows and then orders from that will be it for me. My "custom orders" are essentially the same as yours, @Callie Beller Diesel putting a design I already do on a different piece or making something that I am capable of doing in a slightly different way. I also take a photo of a little sketch and email it for approval. So maybe in my soon to be created binder I will have a section for emails to contact people who either want a piece I'm out of or who may want a special one made. I'm going to modify the commission referral log I made for the gallery I used to be in. On another note, my Square app updated itself right in the middle of me using it this weekend! That was bewildering, all of a sudden it shut down, I reopened it and it looked entirely different. I don't like the way it's laid out now.

It's funny because I love organizing, making color coded binders and files and such! And I understand about the feel of a nice pen on paper. I just got overwhelmed by people asking for things at my booth, and wasn't expecting or prepared for it. I think what I'll do is stick with asking them to email me with a request and try not to get too bogged down in details while at my booth. That's overwhelming enough as it is. I did that at one show where four people asked me about making things, which is more than I've encountered yet at a time. I'm still pretty new to doing larger craft shows, and having a year hiatus didn't help with keeping things running smoothly... I'm going to make myself a binder with sections, because I really like being able to move parts around, and take that to shows. I'll keep my sketchbook for home, that's where I draw for myself and sketch items someone asks for. OOOH! I'm getting excited thinking about the sections I can make, like a place for the info sheets you receive from the show organizers, a place for taking notes and to do lists for each show. That way I can flip to the page where I took notes on the day and will remember it (hopefully). That would have helped remedy my embarrassing situation. I'm messing around with Trello right now. Did you use a specific template or did you start from scratch? I have to read through the guide because there's a lot to it.

Thank you for all that detail! It really helps to see it too. I'm going to play around with it a bit. I also really want to have something written down when I talk with someone and where I can make little doodles too. I need to start bringing a sketchbook or binder to shows where I can jot things down and organize. I find myself writing on small slips of paper and then sticking them in my tool box. Not very organized!

@Callie Beller Diesel Thank you for sharing this! Do you think you could show a photo or explain more how you might use this for custom orders? I just had a mortifying experience where I verbally agreed to save a vase at a show for someone and forgot, then accidentally sold all of those before she arrived. I've also gotten more custom orders at the same time that I want to find a good way to keep track of. Also, would you use Trello while at a show? I think you said you use it with a tablet. I can barely see my phone screen so I wouldn't want to use it with my phone while at a craft show.