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!

5 Ways You Can Make Your Glazes More Amazing

If you’ve ever wished your glaze could be just a little more…

cost effective
green/red/blue/purple
compatible with your other glazes
matte/glossy
stable/fluid

… then you don’t want to miss this free class!

Date: Mar 24, 2023

Time: 10:00am Pacific / 1:00pm Eastern

A replay will be available if you can't make it live.

Watch replay

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

Early Bird Price: $37 USD

Regular Price: $57 USD (price going up in Apr 2023)

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.

Early Bird Price: $397 USD (until Mar 27)

Registration now open

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 until later in 2023.

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

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

How to Measure the Specific Gravity of Your Glazes

In this video I demonstrate how to measure the specific gravity of a glaze I just mixed using a graduated cylinder and a scale. Measuring specific gravity is a way to calculate the water content of a glaze to ensure that each time you glaze, you have the same amount of water…

Intro to Glazy.org – Video Tutorial

If you’ve never used Glazy.org before, this is a helpful tutorial to get started. In this tutorial, I go over the basics of using the site.

Adding Colourants in Glazy.org – Video Tutorial

In this tutorial, I go over how to add colourants to a recipe and keep the colourants separate from the base recipe so your base adds up to 100% and your colourants are shown as additions.

Material Substitutions with Glazy.org – Video Tutorial

In this tutorial, I show you how to use Glazy to make material substitutions using the UMF (Unity Molecular Formula).

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…

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.

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...

Start Mixing Your Own Ceramic Glazes – A Shopping List

Are you ready to start mixing your own glazes? Perhaps you’ve reached the point in your ceramics journey that you want to start understanding the materials you’re working with and what is actually happening when you put your pottery into the kiln.

Don’t Skimp on Safety in the Glaze Lab

Most of our glaze materials come to us in their very basic, unprocessed form. They are dug out of the ground, impurities may or may not be removed, they are ground into a fine powder, bagged and shipped to our suppliers. Working with these minerals in their raw state poses some health risks.

How to Normalize a Glaze Recipe

When a recipe adds up to 100%, we can easily compare it to other recipes. This is particularly useful when we have additions like colourants and opacifiers. The base recipe remains constant while the additions are always relative to 100%. It also allows us to look at 2 recipes side by side and compare the amounts of individual materials. But what do we do if our recipe doesn’t add up to 100%?

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