Commission Pods for Planter

glazed pods before attaching rods

This weekend I finally finished the pods I started making for my aunt in July. She asked me to make her these pods in...2015. So the project took me a lot longer to get started on than it did to actually make and finish.

clay pod in progress

The plan is for these pieces to be displayed in a large urn in my aunt and uncle's yard. The pieces were fun to make and provided me a bit of a mental break from the more thoughtful work I had been working on this summer.

attaching the rods

I finished the under glazing and glazing in the fall sometime, but I didn't get the rods in right away. It took me a little while to pick what I wanted to used and then a bit more time to figure out how best to secure the rods in place. 

foam curing

I ended up using spray insulation foam to secure the metal rods inside the pods so that they wouldn't wiggle around. In order to make sure that there wasn't too much pressure from the foam, I wanted to test the foam first. I built a blank "test pod" of the same size, but without texture or color. The foam worked perfectly.

spray foam oozing out the end of the pods

Unfortunately for me, the second time I went to use the foam, the nozzle was clogged. Instead of spraying neatly and then stopping, the foam drizzled out in a tiny steady trickle of foam with almost no sound and also no stopping. 

cured foam

Luckily I had laid down an old towel under my workspace and luckily the foam comes off the smooth glaze fairly easily. However, I was kicking myself for planning and practicing ahead of time; it would have worked out better if I'd just started spraying when I first opened the can.

cutting off the excess cured foam

As it was, I sprayed the foam as best I could, guessing when the tiny trickle of foam was done. Since the spray foam never stopped coming out, I made a mess on the openings of the pods. Finally I cut into the nozzle of the spray foam applicator and was able to spray the rest of the pods a little more quickly, though the foam still didn't stop spraying.

cutting away the excess cured foam

The foam grew after application, which it is designed to do, and it squirted out the ends of two of the pieces, but most of the mess came from the crummy applicator. The big pieces of foam were easy to remove and all the foam was easy to pull off the teal and yellow and red glazed sections.

cleaned pod with sprig attached

The dark blue texture in the concave section on the top of each pod is rougher and has less glaze, so the tiny foam bits stuck to that area. I had to cut the foam off, then I used cotton make-up squares and q-tips dipped in nail polish remover to clean the foam off the glaze. It worked pretty well. I finished up by covering the foam filled top end with a small glazed ceramic sprig.

finished pods before attaching rods

My next project is to get these pieces wrapped up for shipping. These are the longest pieces I've ever shipped before, so getting them wrapped and ready may take some time.