Can anyone give me some advice? I've just taken this piece out of the kiln but its melted! If was a shallow dish when it went in but has sunk during firing any I'm unsure why. It was placed right at the top of the kiln (1.5cm from the lid) and the kiln fired to cone 5 (according to the witness cones. The clay is a stoneware buff with a temperature range of 1100-1290C so it shouldn't be melting. I'm really confused.

Hello! My friend has asked me to make her a chip and dip with separations, and I’ve been struggling with cracking. I’ve kept very well covered with plastic, have used ample amounts of slip and scoring… I don’t know if there’s a trick to making these? Any suggestions? I may attempt to handbuild the entire thing, but with this one I threw the inner and outer part simultaneously on the wheel, and added the inner section walls later.

I just wanted to share a little bit of it with you and maybe bring a small smile to your face. It started off so nicely. Our handball team won one out of two games in Hungary 🙌 Watching that was such a lovely way to begin my evening. After that I went out into the garden. The weather was amazing and the sunset was just so beautiful 🌅 Since a few things I originally wanted to hang up broke, I got a bit creative and just added random little ornaments, mushrooms, and whatever I could find to my wind chime 😄 It looks a bit chaotic but in the best and most fun way. Later I joined @Kendall Carpenter ‘s live chat while she was glazing and it is actually still ongoing 😄 While watching and chatting along, I also made a few small trinket dishes. They are going to be my test pieces for the May challenge 🫶 And then came the moment that really made me laugh. While I was trying to find @Sarah Hallam ‘s video, I ended up watching @Jeanette Stevens ‘s instead, because I couldn’t find it. There I was watching her video while my toe separators were doing their job and taking care of my foot health 😄 The funniest part was that the blue bowl in the video matched my toe separators perfectly. I just had to take a photo 📸 Now I am going to scroll through YouTube a bit more. @Linda Robertson uploaded a new video and I still have a few to catch up on. So I guess I am set for a little while until my eyes start to close 😴 Good night everyone 💛

I finally managed to finish editing and upload my Mystery Glaze Chip experiment video to YouTube 💜 To put this experiment into context… I actually started this around 6 weeks ago 😅 It’s involved: ✨ two low-fire firings ✨ two cone 6 firings ✨ multiple rounds of testing ✨ test tiles AND actual functional pieces Some of you may have spotted a few of the pieces appearing in my last kiln opening video, and quite a few people have been asking what on earth I’ve been testing 😂 As most of you know… I LOVE glaze chips, I LOVE testing, and I really wanted to venture into the unknown a little and see just how far I could take this experiment. Needless to say… this definitely isn’t the end of it. If anything, this feels like the beginning because I now want to take the testing even further 👀 It’s honestly taken me over 2.5 weeks just to edit together all the footage, firings, tests and photos from the past 6 weeks into one video, and trying to make it flow coherently was definitely a challenge 😅 So apologies if parts feel a little chaotic or rabbit-warren-like! But I’m genuinely SO excited by some of the things I’ve learned and some of the results that came out of this. I actually shared a tiny sneak peek of this experiment in a Skool call weeks ago, so this is where the experiment has progressed to now 💜 Would absolutely love to hear what you think if you decide to take a peek 😊 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srzbVWc8kZo

You may have seen that every year I have a special pottery day with each of my two granddaughters where we make gifts for the family at Christmas. This week we celebrated their 3rd and 6th birthdays.🎂 Last Christmas, my eldest granddaughter Mila completely stole everyone’s hearts by basically “hosting her own YouTube video” impromptu at just 5 years old 😂 She was absolutely amazing… including reminding everyone to “ask a grown up if you need to use sharp stuff!” 😆💜 ( I’ll pop the video link below because it still makes me smile so much ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o2w6bPWEc&t=620s Well… Mila has now asked if she can come and spend the day with Nanna and Grumpy on Thursday because her school is closed here in the UK for voting day (they use the school as a polling station). Her little sister will still be in kindergarten, so she’ll get a whole day with us 🥹 And her exact words were: “Nanna, Can we do pottery… and can I make my own YouTube video?” Honestly… my heart melted. Now usually I am FULL of project ideas… but my brain has completely gone blank this time! Plus only got a few days to come up with something! She has tried the wheel once and loved it, but I think hand building would probably work best for a fun filming day. She learns incredibly quickly and made some gorgeous angels last year. I wondered if anyone here has done particularly successful pottery projects with children around this age? Maybe something fun she could make multiples of as Christmas gifts… or perhaps one really special piece for her own room? I’d absolutely love any ideas or inspiration from fellow clay people 💜 All photos to inspire me would get extra brownie points 🤣🤯