Mystery Glaze

Have you ever heard of mystery glaze? I can't remember where I read about it- likely on one of the art teacher facebook groups that is so helpful for sharing tips and trouble shooting- but I gave it a try!

Why is it called mystery glaze? Because you don't know what it will look like! It is made from a bunch of different glazes mixed together.

You can make mystery glaze when...

you have just a little bit of glaze left in a bottle but not enough to use on it's own

your students didn't stir a glaze with color burst crystals in it good enjoy and there are a bunch settled at the bottom

you have dried up bits of glaze that you don't want to throw out but can't rehydrate on its own

I went through all my glazes last fall and combined partial bottles of the same color when I could to try to save space. If there was a glaze that I couldn't or didn't reorder that was pretty low, it got dumped into the mystery glaze container. All the old glazes I'd tried to save without luck, got mixed in along with some water and some Gum Arabic to improve the texture. 

I used the mystery glaze on the inside of this mug and you can just see a bit of the color in this picture.

Now if someone can't decide on a glaze color, they don't care what goes on the inside of pottery, or they just want the fun of a surprise, mystery glaze is the answer! So far ours has ended up blue-is with bursts of other colors but the glaze will change as we get further into the container since it will have a different mixture of glazes making up that portion. 

*You should obviously make sure that you only mix glazes that mature in the same range and make sure they are all dinnerware safe if there is a chance they could be used on pottery!