Octopus Bowls

 With school starting up again, I have more time to work with pottery. Unfortunately, thrown and handbuilt pottery takes me months to go from wet clay to finished bowl.

 When I was asked to donate some pottery to our local food pantry for a benefit, I knew I wouldn't have the time to throw something for it, so I decided to use a restaurant ware porcelain bowl and do something with decals.

Of course I used my favorite images, the ones of octopuses.

I used an image from Karen at the Graphics Fairy along with an old etching of an octopus verrucosus. 

 First, I measured the bowl around at the rim and then a little lower, above the foot. I used these numbers to divide the bowl, and drew lines down with an erasable marker to guide the placement of the images.  I did the same on the inside rim.

I printed the images out with my iron oxide printer, printing them onto waterslide paper.

 After soaking the decals, I used my guide lines to apply the images to the bowl.  Then I shrunk the verrucosus image and made a bunch of little decals and put these around the interior rim.

I had a few images left over, so I also decorated a smaller porcelain bowl with them.

I put them both in the kiln on Monday night, fired them to cone 4, (over 2000 degrees F) and this morning unloaded them while they were still piping hot.

I couldn't be more pleased!

The larger bowl is pretty huge, about 6 inches tall and more than 11 inches wide at the rim. I am guessing it would hold more than a gallon of liquid.

The smaller bowl is what I consider cereal bowl sized, or a largish rice bowl,  about 3 inches tall, and 6 inches wide.

Because the decals are fired into the glaze, both bowls will be dishwasher  microwave safe.
I am thinking I will donate them both as a set, and hopefully they will get a good price at the charity auction.

Update: The person who coordinates the charity auction chose to auction off one of my older wheel thrown pieces instead of these. So this set will be going into my shop. 

Grandma Doll Does Charity

* I donated these miniatures to Aprilsarmy.etsy.com, a charity shop on Etsy. This month's money will go to Jason, who will use the donations for expenses while getting experimental treatments for pancreatic cancer. Please check out the shop, and 'heart' Grandma's jugs!*

Grandma Doll needs to get her jugs reduced. She says her jug collection is way too large, and they are spilling out all over the place. They are in the way, and have to be lifted from place to place to makeroom. So much so that Grandma says her shoulders hurt from hauling them around. Her jugs are so big that when she lays down they fall into her armpits! That is way too big! Her collection, I mean.

Grandpa doesn't want her to get a jug reduction. He likes her jugs just fine the way they are. Grandpa begged her to reconsider, but Grandma insisted. Grandpa finally agreed to take pictures ofGrandma's overabundant collection.
Grandpa took a very long time photographing Grandma's jugs. It really seemed to cheer him up.

These jugs are about one inch tall. One of them hasa crack in the bottom, but it is hard to see unless you lay them on the floor and lie on top of them and smoosh them up toyour chin.