This week I’ve been trying out some new glazes and also doing some hand building! Right off the bat, this glaze has jumped to my top 2 favorite glaze combinations. Its so interesting and unique! I love the matte sage green that pools to a sandy color, and then how the dark purple stripe is extra shiny in contrast. Gorgeous!!

As for the hand building, I usually prefer to spend my time throwing, but since I’ll be teaching hand building next month I figured I should get some practice in- and I’m actually loving it! These small plates are a perfect quick project for kids, and the process is easy enough that you could make tons of different shapes with the right press molds.

In the past I’ve made small plates thrown off the hump, which are perfect to sell as candle plates, teabag/sauce holders, jewelry dishes, or whatever else you might want to use a small plate for! They also happen to make very nice test tiles for me since they’re quick and easy to make and a perfect “throw away” surface for testing glazes. If I test a glaze on one of these and its horrible, then all I’ve lost is a 2 second little plate, instead of something that I spent considerable time on. However if I test a glaze and its stunning, I have an affordable, fun little dish with tons of uses! I have the round plates currently available for sale on my Etsy. These new square plates are almost better as test tiles, because they’re even easier to make, and are nearly 100% uniform in size and thickness with no additional effort on my part. And they’re square! I currently have access to 3 different sizes of the mold that made these, 2×2, 2×4, and 4×4. I really like how these look and I think it could be really nice to make them in even bigger sizes… maybe a full size sushi platter? I’ll still make the round ones but this is a great new form to have in my inventory!