Oh my.. day two arrived and went so fast. The day began with getting the pieces out of the kiln, and then making sure they are ready for glazing. The color choices are many and I decided to keep the color palette neutral in white, grey colors

The glaze is added to the pieces by simply dunking them under the surface, swirl them around and letting the access liquid drip off. They dry up very fast and you can touch the peices after a few seconds.

Its very important to remove any glaze from the buttoms of each item to avoid the glaze from burning into the plates they rest on in the oven. If not they simply glue themselves to the buttom and its impossible to get them off whole

In just two days I have managed to fall in love with the beautiful art form and I will surely continue to learn more and go for more classes at “finurlig keramik”. The instructor Thora is very professional and very patient with all the questions 😂

She also has ties to Tanzania which I also have and I meet very few people who have actually been so it was just so nice to talk to her about my experiences there and hear about hers

Good night to you all 💕

For more than 5 months I have been waiting to go for a creative slip casting course in Frederiksværk not too far from where I live.

Today was the day and it was just so much for and educational. A while back I "accidentally" browsed Ebay to see if I could maybe buy some molds that are vintage and i stumbled upon a tray and and a large candle holder. I bought them from the US, knowing that they might not arrive safely.

One of them was broken, but not more than that I could still use it, so today I brought them to the course to try out.

The course started with an introduction to casting liquid porcelain clay in plaster molds. The whole idea is that you pour the liquid clay into a mold of plaster, and because of the caractheristics of Plaster, the liquid from the clay is soaked into the paster and leaving 3-5 mm of hardened clay all over the mold. After 20-30 minutes the middle of the clay liquid is still liquid and you pour that back out of the mold, leaving only the hardened clay behind.

Once the clay dries up, it shrinks about 17%, is it no longer sticks to the mold.

You can then easily turn it over and the item is released and is ready to be sanded and checked for any small irregularities etc. As you can see below it casts beautifully but the bottom needs a little TLC with a wet sponge and a sharp knife to be even

Once out of the mold more TLC is needed and there are different methods to get the look just right, and that's why I wanted to do a course, to get the smaller but very important details right.

So fast forward 7 hours later, and I made 3 trays, a bonbonniere, a candlestick holder, and 12 Christmas ornaments.

The last part of the day was clearning up - boy it's a messy hobby!

Finally we were all asked to chose our very favorite color of glaze, so that we can glaze all items tomorrow.

After we left the course, our instructor stayed behind and added all the participant's items into a very hot Kiln at 1280 degrees Celcius overnight.

Just arrived back home, and can't wait to get back tomorrow and continue <3

Blessings

Sys

I had this very beautiful tray, that I just had to make a mold from and after searching for copyrights and not finding anything, as it did not have a brand stamped on it or anything recognizable, I decided to make the mold myself.

I filmed the process and I can surely say that I learned what not to do.

So this video shows really well what not to do, in regards to pouring too much silicone mass into the mold, as it will get way to hard and not give you room to demold easily.

Now when I buy my molds, they are industrially made and very thin, so some of them don't last long or they bend very easily out of shape, so to mitigate that, I always make them more sturdy.

But I accidentally made too much silicone mass, so I made the mistake of adding it to the mold, and I could almost not get the tray out of the mold again.

It took a lot of cutting, and arm strength but I finally got it out, and as unpretty as the final mold is on the outside, I really could not be more happy about the inside.

But have a look, and see for yourself

https://youtu.be/ax4KSmOw5Xk

Making candles to go with all the jesmonite design pieces is just a match made in heaving right?

So I ventured into the world of candle making. Here are my comments after 2 months of testing.

The Mix

Making candles is sooo soothing and one should think that its just about getting some paraffin or stearin and then wuup - Candles done and ready for the shop.

I have watched plenty of youtube videos and googled anything related to candle making, and it is just such a huge information overload, that I don't even know where to start.

So I decided to just test it out, try something and see how it goes.

The basics are:

Candle ingredients are very different.

Soy pebbles are great for candle jars and glass containers, but they don't work well with candle molds.

So I tried and tested a candle mold with a soy base with a 10-20% paraffin blend and even though it looked really great fresh out of the mold, it did not do well once it was burning. it only took about an hour and it was one hot mess all over my living room table as soy has a very low melting temperature and thats the reason why its recommended only for jars and glasses. I found out the hard way. Lesson learned.

Totally not a success!!

So I had to test some more and change up the blend.

Doing a 100% parafin mixture, the candle tends to just look very "plasticky" and store bought, and thats not a look I want in my shop. Also a pure parafin blend tends to give a lot of sink holes as they are called. Simply put - ones it cools down, holes form in the middle of the mold and you have to refill it and it can leave marks that make the candles less attractive and the colors seem to not match after a second pour.

So I settled on a 80% paraffin - 20% soy blend and it works really well. Sink holes are at a minimum and the texture is just great, so I'm gonna go for that for now, and I will also start experimenting with stearin as a blending option too.

When heating up the pebbles, there are sooo many rules depending on where you search for information, but I figured out that you heat it up slowly until melted, add color, stir, let it cool a bit before pouring. I have no idea what the temperature is, but it cannot get to boiling temperature as it ruins the crystals and makes the whole process of candle making impossible to predict.

The colors

There are a lot of different color options to chose from, but they can be quite expensive and hard to come by.

In general colors for candle making are solid and come in small pebbles, sticks, grinded or squares like chocolate. There are two main issues when it comes to coloring - Its expensive and difficult to re-create once you have a color you like.

So I went with a gut feeling and for some reason, a hunch I had from my school years - Crayons... they are wax based, come in many colors and are available in most bookstores, grocery stores etc. And the best part is, they are very inexpensive!

Its quite easy to measure the quantity of a crayon, 0,5 cm for light colors and maybe 2 cm for bright colors for a batch of 400 ml candle mix - that is quite inexpensive. Only downside is that it takes a while to dissolve, but for now I can handle that :-)

Molds and makes

So about 40-50 test candles later and purchasing molds like this one I was finally ready to make my first candles for the shop.

I wanted to start out with light color that are more of a pastel rather than bright colors, as they would work well with my jesmonite items that I have made for the fair in my hometown, and they turned out beautiful.

I simply love the cozyness it oozes out and I can't wait to make more.

For now I ran out of stock and sold all of fair, so I guess it was a huge success. Yay

Next stop is scented candles and new mixing methods with stearin and new Origami molds.

Lots of love and creative thoughts Sys