Win Some, Lose some,

      Can someone tell me how to cut out shapes and fill with different colored clay?  How to clean off excess w/o it spreading over the surface? 

       I’m running out of the brown Standard 266 and transitioning back into white stoneware  (S240).   I thought at first to clean all the tools and wheel and be real careful about getting any brown clay into the white, but it appears that’s not such an issue:  the white clay cleans up nicely with a bit of a sponging and when glazed any change in coloration will be covered.  I would only worry about it if I knew I was going to use a transparent glaze on the white.  

     For this little bowl I recycled the scraps of each color and layered them before throwing.   I love the surprise when the brown looking bowl gets trimmed everywhere and turns marblized!

     I would be more proud of these three little gems if for each I hadn’t begun with three times as much clay and lost it.   Ho Hum.   

I’ve been more creative in my finishing lately, making texture and designs on outside surfaces, but I seem to have developed some bad habit which is making my pots uneven in thickness at the lip and losing center.   Perhaps I’d best return to just throwing and concentrate on technique for a while.

Today I’ll finish up the three small pots pictured above and work up the scraps of stoneware plus some scraps left from clay colored for marbleizing.  When all that is cleaned up I’ll move on to the 25 lbs. of mid-range porcelain that sits waiting.    shudddddder shuddddder shudddder      ttfn