Sawdust fired Ceramic Slab Box

By the by, here's the finished version of the ceramic slab box I had to make for my ceramics class! 

I think these are definitely my favorite angles of it haha... but my requirements for this assignment was to create a box using a building technique with slabs and to create places for texture and areas of interest... along with several places for collages! 

Let's go into more detail below...

So I had wanted to create a design that was very... earthy and reminded me of the beauty of the forest. I had created my signature butterfly and incised some lines onto it to give it interest. For the antennae, I had used nails and attached the butterfly to the box with a rock to lift it up.

I had created a border for the top by attaching separate slabs to create a geometric look like the one you see above.

For the textures and the like, I had actually taken a piece of bark and used it as a paddle to the clay to add texture. Afterwards, I had carved out parts of the slab to create the trees and the border-like design for the collage space.

After, I cut the box accordingly! I had a hard time deciding.. but somehow came out with what I have here. Once that was done, I threw it into the sawdust fire. Unfortunately, it didn't come out the colors that I had hoped it'd have.. so I had tampered with the box's outside several times using acrylic paints, nail polishes, pigmented metallic dust, and more and ended up with the look that you see now.

Once that was done, I had collaged the designs you see here. The silhouettes are simply from google and were stock images that I got off of the internet. The backgrounds are maps, pattern paper, sheet music, rice paper, and neutral invitations. I created a vignette to focus on the animals specifically by using watered down acrylic paints. 

After all of that, I had waited for it to dry and then I had came back and used black acrylic paint to add a nice gold accent to the box as it didn't look right without it. 

I think it came out looking incredibly beautiful.. but I might just be incredibly biased because I love the forest-y neutral aesthetic.