Concentration #3

            Ever since I was young I have always like acorns. Not only do the presence of them remind me of fall, one of my favorite seasons, but they have many great second grade memories asociated with them. On the playground, my friend and I would gather them up in piles for the squirels and have rummage sales with the playground equitment--forcing people to trade in twenty acorns in exchange for a jump role. We used those precious acrons as a form of currency, and to me they have always existed as the underrated "jewels" of nature. With that thought in mind, I decided to have the acorn actually juxaposed to jewel and began my third concentration piece

Getting started on the piece I went to the wheel!! Yay!! It had been awhile since working on the wheel and it was nice to revisit its soothing rythm. I started by created a bowl using AW hi-fire and also created a lid. Im not 100% sure but I think this was the first time I built a lid on the wheel instead of handbuilding. I added a stem, etched in a little texture on top, and was pretty much done with the acorn side. Then I started the jewel side. My original thought was to handbuild half of the jewel as a classic diamond(very iconic), but I instead decided to use the original form and go for more of a gem look.  I used a metal rib and Mrs. Ferguson helped show me how the make the facets. I had a hard time getting the angles right for the facets and also had to repress my urge for smoothing things out because I lost some of the lines that way.

Here's what it looks like after firing:

Reflection:

I'm not sure how I feel about the lid as part of the gem piece but Im hoping to give it more of a faceted look with my glazing. I think part of the reason I've been slow to update this piece is just because I've been avoiding it a little bit. It didn't quite turn out how I had initially envisioned it to be, but I got re-inspired last night while I was looking up some glazing ideas on Pinterest. Im still a little worried that this piece isn't complex enough for concentration submission, but Im feeling a lot better about it now that I have more of a concrete plan for the glazing. Im glazing the acorn like an acorn, using various shades of brown, but Im thinking of going with emerald color scheme.
Here's a sneak peek at what Im looking at: