Still Experimenting With Tiles

When the garden isn't under snow, I often pour my first cup of coffee and wander about in my bathrobe pulling weeds. Sometimes I can get caught up for hours this way and I'm often late for appointments because of it.
The great thing about having a pottery studio in you house is that it takes the place of the garden in winter. This morning I found myself making cone plaques and doing glaze tests in my bathrobe with my first cup of coffee.
We fired a bisque kiln of test tiles on Friday, all went well. No cracking or explosions occurred and I was surprised at how much they didn't warp.
We decided on the middle relief for our tiles. We like the size as it doesn't over power the subway tile and it isn't as deeply cut as the one on the left.

On Sunday, I made up a batch of glaze, but first we had to make a fine sieve to push it through to remove any lumps. After some brainstorming Peter stretched a piece of formex fabric over a 20 gallon paint bucket and kept it in place with the rim of the lid. Yes, I know you can buy a fine sieve, but where is the fun in that? Plus we saved $50 because we already have the formex and the paint buckets.

This morning I made some glaze tests using the reject tiles. I experimented both dipping the tiles in the glaze and brushing the glaze on with a paintbrush, making notes on how many layers each piece got. We'll see which works best. The glaze is a blue grey at the moment but it should be a dark blue after it is fired.
I will kiln wash the shelves today and fire the glaze tests tomorrow. Keeping fingers crossed.