Thirty Days hath September - Day Thirteen - Ceramics

I'm going to confess to you all. Today I cheated.

There was always going to be a day when I would have to deviate from the plan, and it was today. It's five minutes to six in the evening and I have been struggling to get to my project today due to an overwhelming quantity of paperwork which accumulated on my desk while I was away. I'm not complaining, I run my own business and like to see every conversation, booking form, email and piece of social media that crosses my path which means I know what is going on at all times but does take a huge commitment to process every day.

Therefore I have relied on my amazing friend Debra to help me out today and I will tell you the tale of what we did together a couple of months ago. Debra is a wonderful ceramicist and tutor - exuberant at all times, encouraging and has the patience of a saint. Or at least she did when we had a skill swap a couple of months ago! After coming to a couple of my workshops, she kindly invited me over to her studio to learn throwing on a wheel and we spent some wonderful time with her showing me how to throw clay, I felt like a contestant on the Pottery Throwdown - without the skills!

So, I can throw the clay, I can centre the clay, and I got pretty good at sticking my thumbs in the middle to create a dish shape but this was where my skills ended as no matter how hard I tried, I could not pull up the sides of the clay to build a pot, to save my life.
Therefore I decided to specialise in shallow dishes, small ones.....enough to safely store a small pair of earrings in and here are my efforts after Deb had fired them.

Deb came over today in order to generously donate some of her own egg cups to the Thirty Days auction and came armed with the necessary underglazes for me to decorate them. Sadly, I just haven't had time to indulge myself and get to them, I will, but I am temporarily substituting the experience I had a while ago in to the project and hopefully tomorrow when I have more time, I will finish them and get Deb to fire them before the auction on the 30th.

Here is what a beautiful, hand-thrown, bisque egg cup SHOULD look like and by the weekend I will attempt to do them justice by decorating them and returning them to Deb to fire.

So keep your eyes peeled for some 'eggstrordinary' decoration coming to these egg cups soon.
I'll get my coat....