Glazing Distribution Tip

Today in my daily email from the Art of Education I noticed they had an article about storage for easy glaze distribution in class.  After reading the article, I said to myself, "Hey!  I already do that!"  I thought I had blogged about it and realized that I never blogged about it specifically, but only mentioned it in a lesson that I was teaching.  So here it is for all of you that may not get emails from the Art of Education or missed seeing it in my post Burch Clay Cats.

When I glaze with my students (I currently only glaze with third grade and older) I have smaller containers of glaze all ready to go and set up on a counter in my room.  Each container is labeled with the name of the glaze and a photograph of what the glaze looks like when fired.  Students are to take a new brush every time they change to a new color.  Dirty brushes are placed in water buckets at their work stations.  Last year was the first year I used this system, but I did use it again this year with the pinch pot frog lesson we are currently working on.  It really does make glazing so much more manageable for the class room setting and allows students to have more say in color selection for their projects.

I try to have three containers of the same color to help with the sharing process.

I only fill the containers about 1/4 full.  You can always add to the container if it runs low.  Glaze stores in these containers for me for about a month before the glaze start looking like it may dry up.   I usually add the left over color back to the container.  Cleaning the containers is actually a snap.  I leave the lid off, let the left over glaze dry in it.  After it is dry, I gently squeeze the sides of the container (these are tempera painting storage cups) and the glaze cracks right off.  Shake in garbage can, wash container and dry.
                       Happy Glazing!