Wendy Cevola - New colors of the Frank mug by Frankoma now available.

Guys will be guys, thank god!

Ok here's the cliff hanger ending.

Tiki Ano here's Ukulele Bob all re-done.
From this

to this.

The face now has a mottled transparent quality that I actually like.

It did run down a bit onto the top of the ukulele and his thumb

But not too bad considering there's now 6 layers of glaze on the face.

Psycho Tiki D has been waiting forever for the Missionary's Downfall bowl to be done.
I made two just alike in case one exploded. Gecko'z is making my set and has a 50%
fail rate.

Psycho there's only a couple of small glazing defects with these two. Come see if one is right for you.

Out of the kiln and looking pretty scary for MadDogMikes cannibal swap.

She can just see over the edge of the metal pot.

The only defect I found was a yellow crystal found it's way to her nipple.

Side view.

Bottom.

If you put the bending end first you can use a straw that goes clear to the back bottom of the pot.

I need to take the rest of the photos so I'll have more to share tomorrow. Mostly those that had problems.
Now I need to fix all the glaze skips that occurred during this load.
There is always work waiting for me and I'm happy about that, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-07-30 09:36 ]

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-07-30 09:41 ]

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-07-30 09:42 ]

Wow, out-freekin-standing
Those all look great...............

:)

LOVE the cannibal bowl....The interior glaze looks like she's simmering in a bunch of veggies...and the camera angle with her peaking over the rim, made me guffaw...Does Dan like it better now? Is he gonna let it out of the house for the swap?

You need a different color background for your photos of black objects. The objects get lost in the black on black.

Stuff's looking good.

hang10tiki I like those words, thank you. Your necklace shipped yesterday and should arrive in the mail on Monday.

dartharnie I thought vegetables too, like minds. Dan has no choice it's going to a new home, I just don't know which one yet.

GROG I have 10 colors but they all need to be ironed. Now ironing is really the stone age so you want to come do that for me??? Your box shipped yesterday. Your get well mug should arrive on Monday in the regular mail. I sure hope you feel the love when you see it!

GROGS mug was on the bottom of my kiln. Everything on the bottom came out fine. Those things on the top did what was expected as far as defects except this Big Maori Mug. I've never seen this before and I've used this brown/green glaze lots in the past.

The outside wasn't too bad just a few skips.

The inside was so interesting that I decided to put brown/green glaze on the lip and outside skips. The lines you see are not hairline cracks they are lines where the glaze pulled apart to make the patterns.

But to see what would happen if I used clear inside the mug. Maybe it will all smear together or maybe it will retain this pattern. So it is ready to fire. When I've got more ready.

The volcano experiment told me a couple of things. One, if you add glaze to the snow so that it will be colored it just becomes a glaze that is smooth. It lost it's ability to pop and make a lava effect. So the texture on the volcano came from my sculpting and not from the snow.

The inside sealed. The piece used for the big crack worked except that you can see an outline of it.

It is now displayed in a huge Gecko bowl.

Different glazes tend to pull apart from each other. They did in the bowl I made for Philot for the Temple of the Jaguar. I expected it to happen to this bowl and it did.

Side view. This glaze did just fine.

The whole interior showing the defects.

Up close.

I filled all the defects with the glaze I used inside the cannibal pot.

Now it will dry and be re-fired.

This three hula girl bowl didn't do as well as I hoped.
The small lava spot in the bottom had the red glaze pull back. This is an easy fix.

But each of the girls faces had the black glaze blend into the skin color. This isn't supposed to happen.

The eyebrows sagged and moved and became thicker.

It worked for the cannibal bowl. The faces should have looked like this.

This one became Groucho Marks. Even the red on the bottom lip pulled up and disappeared.

It's hard to know if I can repair this with under-glaze or not. I'm going to try. I liked the bowl glaze. Oh and the nipple smoothed out so that didn't work. I'll just make a darker dot on each one.

So there you have it. 50% OK and the other 50% still may be OK after more work.

I hope your work days will be 100% successful. I'm going to go start my day.

Cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-07-31 10:28 ]

See?! That's why glazing sucks. You think you did everything right, and you pull it out of the kiln and..... WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!

Now the effect on the inside of the Maori mug, even though it wasn't planned, actually looks pretty neat.

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-07-31 11:18 ]

Somehow I am both sad and happy, but they still look great Wendy.

I think the inner glaze looks cool too. Sometimes it is an extra special surprise when they come out of the kiln I guess.

The volcano bowl looks great too!

The wonder of glazing... I just went through similar surprises. I think all of the pieces look great. I agree w/ Grog, the interior of the Maori piece looks very cool. I think thumbs up with Ukelele Bob (I agree, I think the lighter face works better than the previous "look"), and the volcano looks amazing!

What they said...

Jon

On the volcano/lava bowl... I didn't see any defects? What was wrong exactly?

Like others said all of it was still beautiful, but a little sad. Those wahines look kinda pissed off. Is there anything you can do to help fix them? Or once glaze "crawls" is there no going back?

I always marvel at your patience working on these things. I would probably throw a temper tantrum like Donald Duck in those old Disney cartoons where he destroys everything in sight. :wink:

Wendy,

I so love the cannibal bowl! What a fantastic creation. I'll be jealous of whomever gets picked as your swap partner. Unless it's me, then I'll do the happy dance!!!

What a great way to start the month of August. I appreciate all of your notes.

GROG I wish I could repeat the inside of the Maori mug. I've glazed with that color before and I've glazed those types of mugs. None of them had this effect show up. I hope I was able to keep it with the clear covering it. This one was a mystery.

Atomic Tiki Punk me too but more than sad I see a challenge.

lunavideogames since Dan grabbed the volcano for his gecko bowl I'll have to eventually make one for my Tiki Island bowl. I'll experiment again when I do that.

TikiAno it may happen to you one day! The glaze was Autumn by Duncan. I'm looking forward to you making volcano's and Bob's.

hang10tiki Oasis, Oasis, Oasis.

tigertail777 ( On the volcano/lava bowl... I didn't see any defects? What was wrong exactly?) The
glazes separated leaving areas of un-glazed bisque in white. I filled them in and re-fired last night.

I decided that since so much of the black glaze spread on the wahine faces that I would just try to cover it all with skin glaze and then paint the faces with enamel. I don't know how well that will work but I did that and the bowl is in the kiln.

With the crawling glaze you go back and scrub it well and then do three more layers of the same glaze. You cross your fingers and re-fire.

(I would probably throw a temper tantrum) You would not, you are going to move your pillars in the painting. That's harder than any repair I need to do. But the image you presented was very funny.

LoriLovesTiki I would love to see the happy dance on UTube so good luck!

Reading all your notes started my day off really well, thank you all.

Working to cover the face with skin glaze.

The I figured out how I wanted to do each of the AP glaze tests and wrote them down. That way I'll know how many layers of brown and the other colors went on each one.

These are the colors and supplies I used.

I started by doing the inside of the mug and the bottom in the Espresso Brown and labeled the bottom with the number matching the list.

For one of the mugs I painted in the colored glaze into the lettering.

Then I painted the green glaze to match Dan's eyes and black into the mouth and nose.

After this dried I used wax resist to cover the colors. I tried to keep it away from the outer edges so that I wouldn't end up with any white unglazed areas when I spray on the brown. I couldn't do a perfect job. Also if specks fall anywhere then that spot will not glaze. The only way to remove wax is to burn it off in the kiln.

After working with this product for 1.5 hours I knew that I will not do this process for the crawl mugs. Too many possibilities for ruining the glaze.

Dan set it up and I began to spray the mugs according to the list.

In the past I would set the mug on the wheel and glaze would pile up and I'd have to stop every few mugs and wash the wheel. Today I decided to try using the spikes I use in the kiln.

The spikes worked really well. I didn't have to...Dan didn't have to wash the wheel until I
was all done. He's working for tikis.

I managed to knock one tiki off the spikes and onto the lawn.

I scrubbed the grass stains and hopefully got them off so that the glaze will not pull away.

Next I sprayed the mug that had wax resist. I saw that on the R I had missed a loop.

I sprayed the front. I tried to wipe off the glaze on the wax resist and it just smeared. Today I wish I had used water to wipe it. Too late now.

I thought I had all five done

so I called Dan to clean up.

When they dried I put them in the kiln with a long preheat to make sure they were also dry inside.

In the middle of the night I remembered that I hadn't completed one of the glaze tests where I would wipe away the brown glaze and then paint in the green and coral. So one test was ruined. Even writing notes doesn't prevent mistakes. Hopefully I will have learned enough here to figure out how I will do the mugs. I plan to finish some with enamel paint and baking them in the home oven.

Today I have to get back to working on the painting for Oasis 13. It will be here soon.
Thank you always for the visit, cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-08-01 09:52 ]

Crawl mug is on fire

:)

Wendy, I have been busy lately and so I spent some time today catching up on the Dan & Wendy Show.
Glad your sciatica is responding to the photo therapy, I know you have been dealing with that for a long time.
The BamBob, IntoxiBob, UkelaBob, and the Don't Worry, Bob Happy mugs all look great
The volcanic glazes look awesome as does the black metallic glaze on the Cannibal pot
We think a lot alike Wendy. When I saw the inside of the Maori mug, my first thought was glear glaze too. It will be cool to see how that turns out.
Sorry about the creeping face glazes. The girls look angry and I'm sure you look frustrated.
SEE YA SOON!!!

GROG got "Zipper Bob" in the mail today. Thank you Wendy. He is wonderful. GROG really like the glazes you used. Roommate said GROG can't use it yet, because GROG not yet inducted into Zipper Club.

GROG miss Tiki-Kate

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-08-02 01:11 ]

I concur, the inside of the Maori mug was a win....I wish you could repeat it so you can say "I now have a new addition to my bag of tricks"

and as for your list...T.V. taught me (thank you, Dad! for forcing, the damn British channel on me...that's what mom called PBS when i was growing up)

(have at it grog)

[ Edited by: dartharnie 2013-08-01 18:38 ]

On 2013-08-01 18:27, dartharnie wrote:
(have at it grog)

Not sure what you mean.

hang10tiki thank you, it has cooled off and later today I'll open the kiln.

dartharnie Gosh I'd forgotten about that guy. I used to watch him when I was in high school.

MadDogMike isn't it fun to know that there is something new on the way?
I feel the need to say thank you a whole bunch. TU TU TU TU and its a privilege to think like you.
I am just relieved that the face didn't creep on the cannibal bowl since it has a deadline. Funny isn't it, same glazes, same task and different results.

GROG roommate right. They should bring it to you in the hospital to use to drink your diet of red juice, red Jello and red liquefied meat. Zipper Bob is only as wonderful as you. I hope you have fun with him after the ordeal is all over.

Thank you for all the photos. I can't take them that close because TC flips my photos sideways.

dartharnie maybe this glaze froze in the winter and will do it on flat surfaces forever. I'll have to try it again. We like British TV series too.

GROG ???

Just because I took the photos of GROG's mug in progress I'm going to post them because I have little to show today.

Carved in clay.

Sanding.

Brushing and then Dan did the air compressor.

Firing then I washed it.

Painted the letters three times.

Rubbed off the glaze that wasn't embedded.

This was an experiment. I used a glaze that was a light color and I painted over the black lettering.

I finished the glazing.

Out of the kiln the lettering showed up just fine.

All day yesterday I worked on the painting for Oasis 13. It is still not done but I made it a much
hotter place to be for the woman. Any moment her grass skirt it going up in flames. I can't seem to take a good photo without glare. These even are fuzzy. I added a lot more color to her skin.

There are problems and details to finish. Example look at her waist on the right and the skirt. I've already started on the fix.

I have to keep working on the painting until I finish. Oasis is around the corner. Cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-08-02 10:55 ]

On 2013-08-01 08:57, danlovestikis wrote:
I managed to knock one tiki off the spikes and onto the lawn.

Awww, he fell on his cute little tushie! lol
~kele

Grog Mug = awesome
Dan and Wendy = awesome
Grog = awesome

:)

The crawl mug looks great, as usual. Are you doing the Oasis painting left handed again?

Mail delivery
Awesome color on the Honu
Thank you soooooo much

This drink was in your honor

Jon

Wendy,

Did I miss the proposal story?

LMK!

Thanks,
Lori

ps: I heart the GROG mug!

Love the ZipperBob, what fun! And the painting is coming along nicely too. Wendy, I was in San Jose last night for a wedding. I went outside and hollered your name towards the northeast ~ did you hear me :lol:

Wendy, painting looks great, look forward to seeing it in person.

Love the Grog zipper mug. Grog, I hope it gets lots of use in your cave post-procedure. I agree, the glaze job on it looks fantastic- love it.

Thanks for posting.

hang10tiki that word can never be used too much. GROG is awesome as are you!

LoriLovesTiki I've been told that Hale Tiki was just laid off his job. So the story which is to be put on the Ohana page will have to wait until he is up and running again. My heart goes out to you Hale Tiki. Best Wishes always.

GROG is such a great guy and good friend. I wanted to bring a smile to his face. Best wishes GROG.

MadDogMike my hearing is not so good but Dan told me he heard it but didn't recognize your voice, good thing to told me. I'm so glad you like Zipper Bob, I like your skull art for the cannibal swap.

TikiAno isn't it fun to go on vacation and to run into so many people that you know. I love tiki events. I'm looking forward to the art show too.

We'll raise a cup to GROG mighty cave man of California. See lots of you soon.

Progress Report

I opened the kiln.

I could see how the different numbers of layers affected the crawl mugs.

The skin colored glaze did not cover the smeared black on the faces

but the defect in the volcano is now gone. I'll do the faces again. Looks like I missed checking out the hands.

The clear glaze worked perfectly. The mug is covered with glaze while leaving the defect showing. I wish I could do it again. Maybe...

Outside view

and another side view.

All the separated areas inside the bowl are now covered with glaze.

There are also differences in how thick the glaze is so there is texture.

Dan has chosen the lighter brown as his favorite. Front

and the backside.

The mug has Dan's bottom and I did one mug with his green eyes.

I was greatly surprised to see that the wax relief worked perfectly. I hadn't missed waxing any areas so out of the kiln I found no brown glaze interfering with the lettering, eyes, nostrils or mouth. Now I really like the wax. However I can't really spend so much time to do this to all the mugs. Three layers of glaze and then one of the wax took 1.5 hours and I still had to do the inside and outside in brown.

I'm going to do a test where I use cold paint in the lettering and leave the front as is which is Dan's preference. With cold paint I only have to do one layer.

Thank you for sticking with me through all the ups and downs. Cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-08-03 14:44 ]

The final decision has been made on the Sacramento Crawl mug. I will leave it at dark Espresso Brown and not do any painting. That way I will be willing to sell them for $70 each. I have 2 left of the run of 50. Shipping adds to those who do not attend the crawl.

Here's what the final will look like. Remember it weighs almost 4 pounds.

We are leaving now to meet up with Mahalo Tiki for lunch. Today I'll do more on my Oasis Painting.

Cheers, Wendy

Nice work Wendy! So you posted proof of Dan's eyes....is there another pic coming?.... :D

The 4 pounder looks great
So does Dan-0
:wink:

You are bad Robert! :lol:

Love that Espresso Brown, classic!

Beautiful brown Wendy! I am confused how the wax relief you were talking about works? Maybe you can enlighten me. I really like your "mistake" interior to that one mug...very cool.

I got your package a few days ago, did not get a chance to open it until this weekend.

You remembered my favorite color I see, and so orange it must be! :) Thanks the little puffy is beautiful! Love the colorful speckles! (sorry for the poor photo my mom was having a hard time figuring out how to get my head and the necklace in the shot :lol: )

I can't wait to put that crawl mug right next to the zombie torch...they look to be about the same in scale and will anchor my Wendy Shelf perfectly...amazing....

On 2013-08-03 14:14, danlovestikis wrote:
The mug has Dan's bottom

I can't believe how lucky Dan is! 50 different people are gonna be grabbing his butt constantly...I usually just get a swat in the back of the head for most of the people who know me.

Dan WISHES his butt was that firm. Maybe you should glaze it a fire it. :lol:

On 2013-08-05 11:52, GROG wrote:
Dan WISHES his butt was that firm. Maybe you should glaze it a fire it. :lol:

Hey spell checka.
It should be glaze it and fire it.

That is all.

zerostreet just for you! Here's the picture up on the screen while Dan is having his light study.

hang10tiki he resembles that remark!

MadDogMike I really didn't want another brown tiki but that's the color of the Coral Reef tiki. I think what sets this apart is the size and weight. So far everyone likes it like this, I so glad you do too.

Here's Dan's response when I asked him zerostreet's question about another photo.

tigertail777 thank you for the photo. If you won a different question I couldn't have given you your color. You must have the luck of the Irish.

I painted on underglaze in the letters and covered it with wax painted the same way. Then I sprayed on the brown glaze. During firing the wax burns off and takes the brown glaze with it so only the under-glaze color is left.

dartharnie you are right. Thank you. I did the sculpt of the Coral Reef Tiki on top of the Zombie Torch.

(I can't believe how lucky Dan is! 50 different people are gonna be grabbing his butt constantly...) I think he hopes it will just be all the woman.

GROG see above that laugh is for you too!

tikiskip new job spell checker and good at it too!

I really enjoyed all your posts, thank you all very much. I love to smile and you give me that each time you post. Here's the mug. I can't seem to get really good photos. I tried two ways.

With flash.

Without flash.

With Flash.

Without Flash.

I had a fun day with my best friend Norma. We met in 8th grade and still hang out together.
We glazed for a day but also talked a lot.

I worked on two hula girl necklaces. I glaze them inside and out. To keep them from running I wiped off the skin color before I added the colors to the eyes, mouth and nipples. It's ok if the lei's run.

I put them on spikes in the kiln. These spots will be sanded when they come out.

Time for dinner and the finale of The Bachelorette. Cheers, Wendy

On 2013-08-05 17:53, danlovestikis wrote:

Without flash.

What's absolutely crazy is how much more classic these look than most of the mugs considered to be classic. Unreal. Beautiful.

Professor is spot on...
Outstanding

Jon

Wendy ... This may seem like a dumb question, but does the flash or no flash look the most like the actual color? I think the flash caramel color is cool, but the non flash chocolate color is fantastic ... it makes the shape and form look stronger .... Great mug ..... Gene

Professor G thank you. My hope is that my art is worth keeping in collections and that these tikis will still be around when Dan and I are not. I try to choose well the projects that I do. When I
saw the photos of the wooden tiki from the Coral Reef in Sacramento it was an easy choice. What
"grabbed" me were the hands. I'd not seen hands carved in this position before. So now there is a mug to go with the tiki.

hang10tiki you posters keep me going.

Gene S Morgan the color of the mug is the darker color. I need to get some bulbs for the portable photographic studio that MadDogMike gave me so I can do better photos again. I used it so much I burnt them out.

I'm back to experimenting on the Artist Proof mugs.

Here I've taken a coral under-glaze and I'm painting right on top of the glazed mug. Since it is on top I don't have to use the wax. However when I fire this it could all run out of the grooves. That's what I need to find out.

Then I took one of the others and covered it with a glaze that has crystals. So it will make spots all over the mug when I fire it again.

Next up is my painting for the Tiki Oasis 13 show. I can't seem to get a good photo.
The title of the painting is:

Hot Night On Hulabilly Beach
Hahana Po Ma Hulabilly Kahakai

I'm sure the Hawaiian interpretation is full of grammatical errors but at least I tried.

Photos of paintings can be so strange. I look at this one and her eye looks like it has a big black dot. The painting looks just fine. I'm still tweaking it. I had fun having lava flow out of the ground. If it keeps flowing the tiki will go up in flames.

Off to work, cheers, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2013-08-06 09:34 ]

Wendy the picture looks great, can't wait to see it. I hear that paintings photograph well outside on a cloudy day

You are correct MDM. Diffused lighting. Nice, even lighting overall, no harsh highlights or shadows.

250 great pages..

:)

Professor is spot on. I realize the back of the mug (w/ the writing) is perfect, especially the vertical detailing. Wowzers.

Might be interesting to see another photo of the mug in another (non-studio) setting, w/ a photo of you or Dan (something to compare the color to). Not that you (or Dan) are the color of the mug, but at least most of us are already familiar with your mugs, and can thus compare and contrast the color of the Crawl Mug w/ Wendy & Dan's mug(s).

That being said, I really like the flash AND non-flash versions.

Thanks also for the wax resist tip. I've never used it on TOP of an existing glaze layer (just on the base bisque forms to prevent glaze from sticking to it), makes complete sense to use it that way but never thought of using it like that. Sure, I feel like an idiot for not thinking of this, but better late than never. Yay....

The painting looks great, her top looks great- as do her eyes (to me).

Wendy, also please tell Dan that I promise to not pinch his butt, but I can't vouch for the rest of these people around here.

[ Edited by: TikiAno 2013-08-06 13:26 ]

MadDogMike it is unbelievable to me that you suggest photos when it is cloudy and a storm rolled in today. I was also able to buy the replacement bulbs for the photographic studio today at Home Depot.

GROG I swear I've tried it everyway possible. But today with clouds in my dark shed it worked best.

hang10tiki 250 pages! What do I win??? No actually I wasn't paying attention and I should have. So here's the deal if I bring you a prize at Oasis do you agree to wear it for at least one day no matter what it looks like?

TikiAno Dan said he was thinking that the backside check should be mandatory.

I am so happy that that some of my ideas are useful information for my readers. Swizzle wrote to me last night that he's using my spike method for glazing.

Oh and I forgot to mention that the glaze didn't skip where I had cleaned grass stains off the butt.

I will try to get a photo of us with the mug soon. I'm glad you like the painting here are more photos from today.

Cloudy outside on my table.

Inside my dark shed.

Closeup.

Closeup.

We went to Alpha Fired Arts and Dan found a friend who while not the most interesting man in the world is still interesting to us. Actual size reproduction from Xeon.

Back from Alpha I needed to do some glaze tests for some new glaze colors.

I went there to find silver for the badge on this Detective mug for our friend Frank.

I lucked out. I went to get a silver glaze I'd run out of and found a brand new glaze that I thought would look even better.

The lettering is in black and will show up fine after firing. The silver glaze will sparkle.

I loaded the kiln and fired last night.

I will open it tomorrow.

The crawl mug is two tall for two layers so I'll have to fire twice as many times.

That's it for today. Thank you for checking in and for your posts, Wendy

Hi Friends, today is my birthday and I choose to start it off by posting here. I just have so much fun doing this that why not start the day right.

After a very long and hard journey I have completed the Missionary's Downfall bowl for Psycho Tiki D
He came and picked it up yesterday and we had a fun visit.

I opened the kiln.

The three new glazes look good. Silver sparkles, Pumpkin Orange and pewter.

I found that the hula girls glazing didn't work again. The Concepts under-glazes by Duncan run. These are under-glazes that fire and have a glossy finish without putting on a clear coat. They are an inferior product for detail. I've tried two ways. First by layers and the by scraping off glaze and applying the black and red on the bisque. Both ways ran.

I am going to paint these woman with enamel and make them look good. Same for this bowl.

Norma and I had a fun play day and her two vases are ready to pick up.

I still need to take photos to show my Artist Proof Crawl mugs. I learned some more and I'll share that tomorrow.

May your day be special, I'm going to go find some cake! Wendy

Happy Birthday, Wendy. BIG HUG!

Are those mettallics supposed to be fired at cone 06? Looks like they worked fine.

Have a GREAT Birthday! Wendy....