Opening a kiln after each china-paint firing makes me feel like kid on Christmas morning, running to the tree to see what wonderful surprises Santa brought me. In this case my kiln is The Santa, and inside of it are my rewards for many hours of hard work! 😃 I inspect them piece by piece, and do a happy dance when all have turned out.
But not each firing is successful, and not all hard work gets a rightly earned reward. Sometimes a kiln misfires, or I mess up a layer of paint and it fires weird, thus ruining not just this firing and this last layer of paint, but all the previous firings and paint layers. 😑😵😫😠And then I want to rip all my hair out. So I have a little cry, and let myself feel defeated and deflated for a couple of minutes, until I accept the situation, regroup and then make a recovery plan. Sometimes mistakes are blessings in disguise.
But all is well with this firing! The parts look great! This body needs more blushing and tone, so I’ll be painting and firing it a couple more times to build up the skin depth. Wish me luck. And pray to the Old Fire Gods!😉