Online Classes and Workshops with Sue
What's Your Next Step on the Glaze Journey?
- 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 (using glaze chemistry)
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: Sep 21, 2023 Live class is now over
The replay is available to watch until Sep 29, 2023.
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 super 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
Registration open Sep 21-29, 2023.
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
September sale: Save $30 until Sep 30
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
Next registration will be early 2024.
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.
Sue’s Ceramics Blog
Articles and videos about clay, glazes and studio tips, written by Sue McLeod
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…”
A Potter With a Paycheque?
This post is based on an email I sent out this past Fall about my journey from a struggling studio potter to starting my dream job as a studio technician to reluctantly growing out of that position and quitting my job in order to teach online classes full time.
Troubleshooting Commercial Underglazes
Have you experienced issues with commercial underglazes? Participate in my underglaze research project and help me find solutions for underglaze firing defects.
How to Measure Specific Gravity – Clay Week 2020
Here's a live demo of how to measure the specific gravity of your glazes so you can have more consistent results. Measuring specific gravity is a way to calculate and control the water content of...
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).
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%?
Publications
Technofile: Matte to Glossy
Published in Ceramics Monthly – Jun/Jul/Aug 2023
Click here to read the article!
Originally published in Jun/Jul/Aug 2023 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 58-59. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
Technofile: Test vs Large Batch
Published in Ceramics Monthly – Oct 2022
Click here to read the article!
Originally published in Oct 2022 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 86-87. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
Technofile: Air Bubble Myth
Published in Ceramics Monthly – Apr 2021
Click here to read the article!
Originally published in April 2021 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 54-55. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
Tips and Tools: The Kiln Sitter
Published in Ceramics Monthly – Nov 2020
Click here to read the article!
Originally published in Nov 2020 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 60-61. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
Technofile: Hard Panned Glazes
Published in Ceramics Monthly – Oct 2020
Click here to read the article!
Originally published in March 2020 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 90-91. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
Originally published in March 2020 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 62-63. http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org
“O La Fuente”
by Sue McLeod
Published in 500 Teapots – Volume 2
Page 257
"Understanding Cone 6" - Pittsburgh 2018
My NCECA presentation Understanding Cone 6 is all about using glaze chemistry, the Unity Molecular Formula and the Stull chart to understand how different surfaces are created at cone 6.
Which glaze formulas are likely to be matte or glossy? Which ones are likely to be crazed or be under-fired? How does flux ratio impact fired results?
Click here to read or watch/listen to this presentation on my website.
Understanding Cone 6 presentation slides and script are also available as a free download!