Ever since Marsha Minutella of MarshaNeal Studio began writing her 3rd Friday Cone 6 Glazing blog for Beads-of-Clay, I have been feeling like I would like to try some myself.
The occasion presented itself when my friend Cait Throop wanted to make some buttons. She thought she would like to glaze them in colors. Since they were made with a white stoneware clay, what other choice was there than to get some of those cool Coyote Glazes. I chose the Best Selling Sample Set #3, Coyote’s 12 best selling glazes in 4 oz jars
Shino, Gun Metal Green, Really Red, Desert Sage, Archie’s Base, Red Gold, Mottled Blue, Oasis Blue, Black, Eggplant, Pam’s Blue and Pam’s Green ( which were on sale at the time).
About 2 weeks ago I glazed up some test pieces. I dutifully wrote on the back in underglaze pencil the name of each glaze I painted onto the clay pieces. ( per Marsha's instructions) I am not usually a good record keeper but glaze testing has to be the exception. I fired the test strips at Cone 5 Speed Fast Hold 16 minutes in my Caldera Kiln.
I made my test pieces with a deeply stamped pattern so that I would be sure to see how the glaze "breaks." The two pics above are of my samples. Now that I have seen how they came out, I may have coated them too thickly.
But the day of the first glazing of the buttons we took that into account. This is the Shino with 2 coats. It turned a wonderful rich and golden brown. A real keeper. That beautiful fibre is Cait's handwoven scarf that the buttons are being made for.In her Etsy Shop now.
Here is the Mottled Blue on 3 of Cait's buttons. I love this one also. Not sure if it has 1 or 2 coats of the Mottled Blue.
The green beads in this picture have 1 coat of Gun Metal Green. I wet the beads first since the glaze got so powdery. I think some may actually have more than 1 coat but certainly not a full 2nd coat.
This picture shows the test piece for both Oasis Blue--3 coats and Shino 2 coats. The three coats looks too heavy to me. I know that I am a heavy glazer so I am cutting back to 2 coats in the future.
Some of Cait's buttons being glazed. This is our 2nd session and they have not been fired yet. These are not as heavily coated as the first try. We will see if it makes a good difference.
Gun Metal Green and Desert Sage
Our first try using the glazes on buttons. They came out quite true to the test strips. We learned the hard way that the holes fill up easily even if you clean them. We were able to salvage almost all of the beads from the rods. I redrilled some of the holes with a diamond drill and water.
Hope you could find some useful info in this first run of Cone6 glaze testing.
