Hi guys and welcome back to my channel Blue Nose Trading. My name is Tori Solis, and today I have a quick series review going over all of these pieces that I made with the Industrial Minerals Company's dragon fruit clay. I don't have very many pieces because this was a very challenging clay for me to work with.
It was kind of like porcelain with sand in it, and it had all the things that are difficult and challenging about porcelain, as well as everything that makes heavily grogged clay's difficult going on at the same time. They didn't compliment each other to make anything easier, it was just really difficult.
I lost a lot of pieces when they were drying to cracking, and I lost a lot of pieces in the bisque fire, and I lost a couple more pieces in the glaze fire. Not a lot made it through, but, I would do it again. Because as challenging and difficult as it was, this clay is absolutely beautiful. These are some of the most gorgeous pieces that I've ever seen. I'm actually going to be keeping two of them. So let's get into what we did here.
We will start off with the mugs. This one right here has the Old Forge sunset, and then the Bloomberg's rutile on the inside. It is opalescent on the inside. I did leave some of the clay raw here, and this sunset is just amazing. I would keep this one, but I don't normally keep mugs because I drink out of other potter's mugs. This is a very nice one. This one is going to go on my website, which is where I put my favorite things for my patrons to get, and for you normal, non-patrons to get later.
This one is covered in a floating chrome, Old Forge floating chrome, with the Bloomberg's rutile on the inside. Another really nice one. The glaze on this is amazing, the only downside is that glazes run like crazy on this clay.
This one was just they Mayco Stroke and Coats, Bloomberg's rutile inside. Just another mug, lots of raw clay. It's got a really nice texture. It's not too rough on your hands, but it does feel a little bit gritty, which I enjoy.
This one is sweet minty turquoise and white on the inside, with a little bit of raw clay. Again, fabulous. It dripped. The glaze runs a lot on this clay body. Which is good and bad.
This is my stony matte turquoise inside of the carving. With the Bloomberg's rutile on the inside. Again, these are all going to be posted with close ups as shorts. If you guys watch my short videos I post one almost every day. Just a close up of some random pot. Some of them are good, some of them aren't good. Subscribe to my channel, Blue Nose Trading if you want to see those. It's a good time.
This was the first time I ever threw a thumbler. It's got a little thumb indent here. It actually came out pretty well. This is the campfire with white on the inside. Look at that drip right underneath the thumb indent. Chef's kiss. Love that.
This one is Old Forge sunset again on a planter. It did almost the same thing, though not as dramatic as it did on the mug. I'm keeping this planter. It's got a little-bitty crack in the bottom, but I don't care it's mine now. This glaze looks great.
This one. This one ruined a whole other pot. Which, I need to go grab the other pots, and I'll do that after I go over the good ones, and have a short break. A little time-swirly transition thing. But look at these drips! Look at the drips on this. This is a bonsai planter. I'm also keeping this one. It did crack a little bit on the inside around one of these holes, but that's the story of this clay. This glaze! This glaze is something else. This is that sea foam that it didn't come out this way for my second batch but I had a little left over from that first batch. I saw how it looked on the test tile for this clay and I knew that I had to have a piece of this for myself. It is just luminescent and blue, and it dripped, and it's beautiful.
Then I had one more with the sweet minty turquoise because I really liked how that test tile turned out. This one is a planter. It's got a really nice ripple right here, a really great wanted-to-drip-but-didn't.
I'm going to grab some of the failures real quick because I forgot to bring them with me and we will go over those too.
So the failures. This is a bisque one that cracked down the side, up here. It cracked down the side in bisque. I'm going to tumble this bisque and use it as part of the media for some of my plants. That will be fun and it won't go to waste.
Then this one is where when I fired it I had set this one inside of this one like this, and it dripped in there really bad. The glaze on this just didn't turn out great. There's a tile stuck on the inside of it, because I did think about it, and I put some tiles down, but it dripped way more than I thought that was possible. So that's fine, we lost one.
This one, stuck to the kiln shelf. There were actually two of these that stuck to the kiln shelf. One of them I had to take off with a hammer, and this one came off with a chisel. But I'm not able to save it because this entire glaze had a really bad reaction and it cracked through the body all over this. You can't see it in this video, but this is trash. I'm going to break these down and put them in my rock tumbler and see what kind of comes out of that.
Just for fun, this is the kiln shelf that I now have to grind with and angle grinder to get all of that crap off of there. Which is great. But, honestly, despite there being a lot of problems with this clay, and it making a lot of work for me. Just so much work. These are going to be expensive, and I don't want to hear about it. So much work, I had to order this clay in from California. I love it. I'd probably do it again. Industrial Minerals Company's dragon fruit, I recommend it, but it is very challenging. Or at least, my experience was that it was challenging to work with. Maybe you won't have any problems with it, and in that case, definitely go get some of this because it's really really really beautiful. But watch out because it likes to let the glazes run.
Thank you so much for tuning in this week guys. If you'd like to help support my channel, the content I make, and help me get access to weird clay to try for you guys, you can support my channel at patreon.com/bluenosetrading. If you just want to hang out and see my weekly art video, as well as lots of daily shorts, you can subscribe to this channel, Blue Nose Trading. Thank you so much.
Remember to go hug your friends, and drink lots of water, and I will see you guys next week!
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