Monday, January 28, 2013

I didn't blow the kiln up!!!!!

As some of you know, my friend Ted (artwithmre) and I have been talking about firing clay pieces with marbles or other glass pieces in them. He tried, and posted some of his results, and now it is my turn. I tried using a variety of glass pieces, from marbles, mosaic tiles, the glass "wafers" that are used in plant arrangements, millefiori glass pieces and even a variety of glass beads, including faceted beads, seed beads of a variety of sizes, bugle beads, and some square beads I had.
 I fired to cone 04 since Ted said he had some pieces where the glass popped out. Some pieces were glazed, and some were not. I was very excited to see how they turned out, so I came in over the weekend to open the kiln, and was surprised to find that every piece survived. Here are some of the results...

Before...
 


After...
      








Monday, January 14, 2013

I'm a little frustrated right now.....

I know that I haven't posted in a while, my friend Mr.E. likes to remind me about that, but I felt the need to post today. In my classroom, I have my paper area. I am very lucky that one of my parents works for a publishing company, and at least once a year I am lucky enough to receive a huge paper donation. This is the paper that I use for the "free draw" box. When the students are finished with their project, they are allowed to get free draw paper and draw whatever they want. Now comes the frustrating part. I have a box clearly labeled with "free draw" on it as shown below. But there are always at least 5 students in every class that always grabs the good drawing paper instead. I have discussed this numerous times with the students, and they all can tell me where the free draw paper is, but there are always a few that just won't do it. when I talk to them about it, they always respond with "oh, I didn't know". My question is how can I possibly make it any more obvious? I don't have the room to move the paper somewhere else, or to keep the good paper locked up. Grrrrr......