I started calling these my “Ikea” bowls because they remind me of some of the motifs found on Ikea fabrics.
OK. I’m on the final step with these. I built them, under-glazed them, bisque fired them and now they are getting a clear coat of glaze to make the colors bolder and give them a glossy finish.
I made black and clear stripes on the back sides. I want them to be super-playful. I also deliberately speckled the backs with black too. I love un-perfectness! Does anyone remember the designer Mackenzie Childs? She always has black & white checker patterns in her work. For me, it’s definitely stripes. I don’t know why, but they keep showing up in my pottery pieces!
This is a test piece for the bunch of little bowls I have in the works. It is clear glaze, on white pottery, with a marble fired on it. The glass marble melts to the lowest point in the pottery piece, the glass then crackles from heating and cooling and the glaze adheres the crackled glass to the pottery. I have a tiny black and white striped bowl. I glazed it today and threw a marble in it.
Bad news on the tray front. One of the trays has cracked. I am waiting for the other to be fired. I have to decide if I want to go ahead and put the time in glazing it, in hopes that I can glue it back together, or just scrap it… I’ll make my decision next week.
I spent the rest of the class trimming & cleaning up all of my potential mugs. Next week I need to add the handles and embellish them a bit.
If you know me, you know I can’t just leave well enough alone! I see pottery vessels as blank canvases. I have some ideas bubbling inside that brain of mine… but those ideas will have to wait until next Tuesday!
Be Creative Mary 
If it cracks during bisque firing I usually scrap it. The other thing I have done is break up the piece into smaller shards and fire them with spots of glaze and use them in mosaics. If it breaks before bisque firing I recycle the clay.
Thanks for your insight! Ugh. I put a lot of work in…I might try anyway…worse case scenario it breaks…which is what I’ll be expecting…but maybe, just maybe…I can salvage it!