New Handmade Ceramic Owl Buttons

I am having a lot of fun working with my kiln and creating all kinds of new handmade ceramic buttons. These are some turquoise owl buttons I made and listed yesterday http://www.etsy.com/listing/70591846/turquoise-owl-buttons-4-handmade-by-me?ref=pr_shop. I love the look of them and have created the same design in lime green and yellow.

Working with ceramics takes patience though and you never know what you're going to get. You have to take the raw clay and make the buttons and then wait, and wait, and wait some more for it to dry. I usually leave it at least a week to make sure they're bone dry. Then you have to fire in the kiln for several hours. Then when they cool you can glaze them. Each glaze needs to be applied at least three times to get the depth of colour/color required. Sometimes I glaze in steps depending on what I'm doing so I may glaze some of the buttons. Fire in the kiln which takes a full day (including the cooling time) and then glaze and fire again. It's a very labour/labor intensive process but I must admit I do love how they look.

I'm teaching myself the process and have lots of ideas - not all of which work out. Since there is so much time involved from start to finish it's truly disappointing when an experiment doesn't work out. I guess that makes the successes that much sweeter though.

I can't wait to get started on some of the other ideas I have in my head. Now let's hope they translate well to ceramic!