Online Classes and Workshops with Sue

What's Your Next Step on the Glaze Journey?

Watch this video if:

You know you want to learn more about glazes
You're not familiar with my 3 glaze courses
You're wondering which glaze course would be the next best step for where you're at on your glaze journey

This video was originally recorded live in Jan 2023. You can read more about each course by clicking the links below. I hope to see you in one of my glaze courses soon!

What Do the Glaze Materials Do? workshop

A beginner friendly workshop that will help you understand the role and function of each of our glaze materials. This is the first step to understanding glaze chemistry, which opens up a whole other world of ceramic possibilities.

If you’re ready to start learning about glaze materials, then you don’t want to miss this workshop where I’ll explain what glazes are made of, how they melt in the kiln, and how each material fits into the the equation.

90 Days Access

Price: $57 USD

Glaze Mixing Essentials

Learn how to mix your own glazes from scratch and do a Colour Run by testing a base glaze with multiple colourants in this online workshop.

Glaze mixing is a foundational skill that will enhance your creative potential, save you money and increase your understanding of the materials you're working with.

You'll get instant, lifetime access to the co when you register, plus an invitation to my monthly membership - The Glaze Lab - for extra support.

Price: $197 USD

Registration now open.

The Art of Glaze Chemistry

Learn how to use glaze calculation software to analyze your glaze recipes and adjust melting temperature, change surfaces between matte, satin and glossy, and fix glaze fit issues like crazing/shivering/dunting.

Explore how base glaze composition affects colourants so you can design the unique glaze palette you've been wishing for.

This course takes a deep dive into the science behind glaze composition so you can develop the best glazes for your work. No previous chemistry knowledge required.

Price: $597 USD

Next session - Fall 2023

Join the waitlist

Mastering Glaze Consistency

A 4-week, online program that will teach you how to get the best glaze results possible with your existing glazes, and repeat those results from firing to firing.

Learn my step-by-step testing system for improving the consistency of your glaze application and results, and fixing many glaze flaws like running, crawling, glazes turning out the wrong colour, cloudy clears etc.

Price: $347 USD

Registration now closed.

Join the Waitlist

Free Guide

Do you have these glaze challenges?

You don't know how much water to add to your glazes
You get different results every firing
Your glazes aren't turning out as expected
You can't seem to keep your glaze thickness consistent

Grab my FREE GUIDE

You'll start understanding your glaze results better when you measure specific gravity. It just takes a few simple steps to calculate the water content of your glazes and then it's easy to keep them consistent. No more guessing!

Consistent water content = consistent application thickness = consistent results.

Send me the guide

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Sue’s Ceramics Blog

Articles and videos about clay, glazes and studio tips, written by Sue McLeod

99 Cone 6 Glazes You Can Try

Have you been looking for new glazes to add to your glaze palette? If so, I have 99 different cone 6 glazes you can try. That probably sounds like a lot to look through, but it’s really just 9 base glaze recipes plus 10 colour variations each.

Commercial Glazes vs Mixing Your Own – A Cost Comparison

This post will give you an idea about the differences between commercial glazes and mixing your own from cratch.

A Clay Reclaim Process Using a Pugmill/Clay Mixer

If you run a community studio or your personal studio is high production, you probably have a lot of clay scraps to deal with. This article will describe the clay reclaim process we use at the very busy pottery studio where I worked as technician for 6 years.

A Low Tech System for Recycling Clay Scraps

As clay artists, we’re so lucky that we can reduce the amount of waste we produce by reclaiming or recycling our unfired clay. When we make something that cracks, warps or doesn’t look how we wanted it to, we can reclaim our clay, bringing it back to its original state so…

Are You Mixing Your Glazes Well Enough?

Glaze results on the thin side? As a studio technician at a busy pottery studio, it’s my job to mix and maintain 20 different studio glazes. I’m also the one studio users often go to for help when their glazes don’t work out as they had hoped. Every now and then…

15 Tips to Get Started with Glaze Testing

I find ceramic glazes to be absolutely fascinating. I had no idea when I started working with clay that glazes would become the main focus of my life. Glazing was always an afterthought and I basically ruined most of my pieces by glazing them…

Understanding Cone 6 – NCECA presentation 2018

On Mar 15, 2018 I gave my first ever NCECA talk. I was part of a panel discussion called Glazes Without Borders, moderated by Matt Katz. My co-presenters Kiara Matos and Peter Berg gave talks about...

How to Turn a Matte Glaze Glossy with One Ingredient

Do you have a matte glaze that you wish was a bit glossier, or would you like a glossy version of one of your matte glazes? It’s really easy to convert a matte glaze to a glossy glaze, just by adding one ingredient…

Different Styles of Test Tiles You Can Make for Glaze Testing

The word “test tile” can refer to any shape of clay that’s used to test glazes, slips, underglazes, engobes etc. Test tiles can be any shape you wish and can be made in a variety of ways. In this post, I’ll share lots of different examples of ways you can…

What Glazes Can You Make with Limited Materials?

When you start looking for glaze recipes and have a limited number of materials on hand, you may find that you have almost (but not quite) all the materials for a million glaze recipes, but you can’t find a recipe that only uses the materials you currently have.

How to Make a Saturated Epsom Salt Solution to Flocculate your Glazes

Flocculate… What Does That Even Mean? You may have heard this term “flocculate” in reference to glazes and thought it was a funny word but you’ve never really known what it means. Or you may have been told what it means several times and still…

How to Fix a Hard-Panned Glaze with Epsom Salts

Have you ever had a glaze settle into a rock hard layer on the bottom of your glaze bucket? It’s impossible to mix and even if you do get it mixed, it just settles out again. This annoying phenomenon is called “hard-panning” and it often happens to glazes that don’t have enough…

How to Add Bentonite to a Wet Glaze

When I was in school and learning to mix my own glazes, I was warned: “Make sure you add bentonite to the DRY materials and mix them together BEFORE you add any water.” It was good advice. The reason for the warning is when bentonite gets wet it swells and gels and…

Getting Clarity with Clear Glazes

There’s nothing worse than a cloudy clear glaze muddying up your beautiful slip design, screen printed images or coloured clay. How can we make sure our clear glaze is always clear and prevent it from going cloudy? In this article, I’ll explain some of the factors that affect the…

How the Water in Your Glaze is Affecting Your Results

Does any of this sound familiar? You unload a piece from the kiln and the glaze turned out perfectly! So you glaze more pieces with the same glaze combination, fire them, and they turn out completely different… OR… You mix a small test batch of a glaze and LOVE how it looks…

Why I Use a Graduated Cylinder for Measuring Specific Gravity

I use a graduated cylinder for measuring specific gravity. A slender container is going to have smaller increments than a wide container, giving higher accuracy. You could compare this concept to using a scale with 1g increments vs 5g increments. The smaller measurement is…

Why I Don’t Use a Hydrometer to Measure Specific Gravity

I didn’t always know about measuring specific gravity. Of the 10 years that I’ve been mixing glazes, I’ve only been measuring specific gravity for 3 of them. It wasn’t a technique I learned in school. But… I had heard about it enough times that eventually I used it to try…

12 Tips for Managing Glazes at a Busy Pottery Studio

Glaze Management 101. It’s a lot of work to run a school or community pottery studio. There are a lot of moving parts to look after. I’ve been a studio technician for 5 years now and it’s a very busy and rewarding job. As the technician, I’m taking care of all the behind the scenes…

The Air Bubble Myth

There’s a common belief in ceramics that leaving pockets of air in your clay, either due to insufficient wedging or by creating an enclosed form, leads to explosions in the kiln. The belief is often communicated in these ways: “Poorly wedged clay containing air bubbles will explode…”

How to Make a Cone Pack

In this post, you’ll learn how to make a cone pack using pyrometric witness cones set into a coil of clay. Cones are important for measuring the heatwork of your firings.

Temperature vs Heatwork – Why We Use Witness Cones

I receive a lot of glaze questions and the first question I generally ask in return is “What did the cones look like?” Knowing whether the kiln was over- or under-fired is important for diagnosing many glaze issues. Sometimes I’m told a kiln temperature in response. But…

How to Convert Kaolin to Calcined Kaolin

If you have too much clay in a glaze recipe, you might have issues with your glaze crawling during the firing. Crawling is where the glaze pulls away from the clay body due to a combination of shrinkage, poor adhesion and high surface tension.

How to Make a Good Kiln Wash to Protect Your Kiln Shelves

Kiln wash is a material that you can paint onto your kiln shelves. It looks very similar to a glaze when being applied. It acts as a barrier to prevent unexpected glaze runs or drips from ruining your shelves. Kiln shelves are made of a hard material that is similar to…

Glazy Demo – Adding Recipes and More

Do you use Glazy.org to store/share your glaze recipes? If you’re just hearing about Glazy for the first time, you should definitely go check it out. It’s a ceramics recipe website that allows you to store recipes with photos, share them with the community and analyze the chemistry/UMF of your glazes, all in one place.

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