I’m pleased to report that I finally got around to glazing my first set of beads this week, and I’m waiting with my fingers crossed to see if all of the glazes I chose behave in the kiln. I used Amaco’s Hot Red and Opaque White as well as Teacher’s Palette’s Leaf Green and Midnight Blue for my beads as shown below:
(You might notice that there’s a gray glaze here instead of Leaf Green which was a total accident, I promise I actually used Leaf Green on the beads)
Glazing beads–especially the spherical ones I made this month–is soooo much harder than I anticipated, and I think painting just these 7 took me nearly 2 hours all together. The trickiest part about the glazing process was making sure every bead had an even coat for all 3 passes (3 coats is the general rule of thumb if you want your glazes to be opaque in the end!). I’ve already got some ideas for how to improve my techniques for next time, starting with actually carving out my designs in the clay and now just painting them on.
Even though this month felt a little rushed, I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do with the time I had, and I’ve already learned a lot about beadmaking. I do wish I had been able to add basalt sand to my clay as a tempering (stabilizing) agent to emulate the Purépecha peoples’ ceramics process, but nobody on Earth is willing to sell small quantities of basalt sand and I’m not sure my mother would have appreciated the leftover 20-pound bag of sand if I had bought some at Home Depot.
I’ll be sure to add pictures of my North America beads as soon as they’re out of the kiln, but until then get excited about South America month!! For February, we’ll be taking a peek at Peruvian ceramics while I try not to blow up the kiln with more beads. See you then!
