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!

Crayola ColorCycle

Have you heard about Crayola's ColorCycle program? Someone told me about it last week and I just got both my schools signed up. Similar to the Elmer's Glue Crew program I described here, you just set up a collection bin at your school and when your box is full, the company will pay for shipping to collect the waste. From their website,

Crayola ColorCycle - Turn Crayola Markers Into Energy!

Crayola and schools across North America are banding together to help kids understand the importance of their role in protecting the environment. That’s why we are launching Crayola ColorCycle. Through this initiative, students in K-12 schools across the continental United States and parts of Canada can collect used markers and send them to a conversion facility where they will be transformed into clean-burning fuel.

How cool is that? The FAQ section states that they will accept other brands' markers, not just Crayola. They even accept dry erase markers and highlighters. Your school doesn't earn any money for this program, but it's still a great thing to do and a fun way to teach students about recycling. I've just got to make a cool box to hold the dried up markers now! Will you join me in recycling? I hope so!