Ceramics - glazed & fired!

Here's the results of my ceramics after their oxides, glazes and second firing... I've got mixed feelings about the turn out, some are looking amazing and some not so brilliant, but all part of the learning curve...
All my sample pieces - not many colours came out too well ...

 Copper oxide close up - I love the green tints coming through on the creases in the porcelain; it's a really lovely effect which I could try to manipulate into some of my future designs

 Some mugs with cobalt carbonate, (really strong!) the red iron oxides & yellow ochre (not so strong, but close up has a slight tint of colour)

 Detail of the cobalt carbonate; I really love this range of depth of colour - the effect on the handle is lovely and soft and the speckled blue finish to the other areas of the mug are a nice delicate effect as well.

 The manganese oxide finished off varyingly; in some places it came out really quite strong and other areas, not at all. The colour itself is quite nice in the softer finished areas, but is more of a mucky dark brown finish in the darker finished areas.... not too sure on this oxide at all...

 Close up of the effects of latex; you can just about make out the lines where the latex was protecting the porcelain when I first used the oxides. Seeing the comparison of plain porcelain and the faint colour of the oxide is actually quite a lovely finish; I might try to incorporate this effect when designing my final pieces.

 Cobalt carbonate - really strong and striking finish... absolutely love this!

 Of the pieces that didn't have bases, I found there was quite a lot of distortion to the very circular shapes the pieces originally were before the second firing. Don warned me about this, so now I can see it's important to keep in mind how this could affect the professionalism of my pieces. (Unless I used it to my advantage and focused on it as a feature point of interest in my work...?)

 The copper oxides also came out as quite a success. The Paris etched piece came out a bit of a mess - but I've learnt my lesson about how much oxide to put on the ceramics and the effects if I go overboard = very dark black burnt finish!!!

 I do really like the tint of green across the whole piece though, it's almost like a smokey, hazy effect across the city landscape....

 Another favourite is my 'skinny tall' piece... Had a minor casualty when applying the oxide, hence the big chunk missing out of the side - again, learnt my lesson on how to handle my materials! I absolutely love the range of colour from the porcelain grey/white - green - black that flows over the whole piece.

 I particularly like the edges, they look like they've been burnt away...

 I'm really happy with the textures underneath the oxides as well, they're really brought out by a touch of colour and give a really delicate finish with some of the details such as the lace below.

All in all, a fairly good turn out, and some really important lessons picked up about the way the oxides work, how to use them across my work, how to apply them to my pieces and how you can't be too sure on how they'll turn out!
Next plan of action is designing the final (minimum of 4) pieces to make fire and glaze before next thursday....!!!!!?!?!!!