My process

This post is all about my process and how I ended up creating the jellyfish hanging pieces. This project was very much out of my comfort zone and getting my head around the technicalities of building and hanging the pieces took a lot. The whole process was very lengthy, from making each individual piece, to smoothing, drying, glazing, unplugging tiny holes, lustring and firing each piece 3 times, it takes a lot of time and effort on such little things. I made hundreds of pieces that all make up these jellyfish and here is how I made them.

I began by sketching out my new ideas based on my first round of research and testing to decide my new method of building. (Basically understanding where to put holes to hang parts from). I had also decided on new ways of creating the jellyfish's arms/main tentacle, one was making bell like shapes so there's less of a gap between each piece while still maintaining the ruffle like look. The other was to make teardrop shapes and stagger them together.

Then it was back to the making part.( I do have a few time lapses of my process but google sites won't allow people to view them but one day i'll figure it out and they'll show)

As everything, it begins with rolling out some clay. I decided on using porcelain in the end as I could convey the transparency better with it. Then I cut out small circular shapes and flattened them out around beads that I had previously made. (I have a video that shows this part) This worked really well in making the shape I wanted. I made 2 batches for the final part as there was still things I wanted to test out e.g glazes and lustres for this 1st batch.

I dabbled in making a new unplanned shape of 's' shaped pieces that I thought would link together to resemble the centre of the jellyfish but they didn't work out after glazing so I didn't use them. (pictured below)

Drying out

Next was making a batch of swirly tentacles. I made loads of these because I anticipated that I would break a lot of them, (spoiler: I did) but luckily I had made many. I had extruded a bunch of different sizes as it was hard to tell what size would suit the smaller jellyfishes, but the thinner they were, the harder they were to handle as they were easier to break, especially when trying to smooth out:(.

Here's me holding one in my hand for size reference

Lastly I made tiny teardrop pieces which were nice to cut out and I also went in a different direction in creating tiny 2D jellyfish with hanging tentacles. These were a lot of fun to make! (pictured here)

Making the heads was also fun, I moulded them around the oddest things such as a Pringles can, cups, spray lids and glaze pots but they came out in the exact shape I wanted. I added some texture to a few of these such as carving lines to try and get some transparency to show. In the 2nd batch I added even more textures to the heads such as stamping patterns, carving the whole heads and so on.