A tea set (my first "cutesy" thing)

Child's Rainbow Tea Set
Red/white clay mix; white glaze outer with golden green (yellow), forrest green (green), raspberry (pink), and noxema (blue) accents;
tea pot 4" wide, 6.5" long, 5" tall; 4 saucers 3.25" diameter by .75" tall; 4 tea cups 2.75" diameter by 2.5" tall
Gift to the Collection of Miss Isabella Mullally of Seattle
I had seen a couple people in the studio make tea pots and thought it'd be really fun to make a tea set. Of course, making a tea set that looks really polished and clean is pretty hard, so I decided to start with a kid's set since that would be easier and a little more fun.

I threw all of the saucers and tea cups all at once "off the hump," which means having one big mound of clay where I take the top and make one little thing, cut it off, then use the next top part of the big hump, etc. It's basically a fast and efficient way to make several small pieces. When they were bisque-fired, I dipped them each in white glaze and then painted the inside of each cup with a different color. I also painted a circle with each matching color on the saucers so that each cup has a mate. ADORABLE, if I say so myself.

I made the tea pot just like a bowl that curves in at the top, threw the lid like a very shallow bowl, and then the spout like a tiny vase that is extremely narrow at the top. and then after they were each leather-hard and trimmed, I assembled them. All of the handles are strips of clay cut from a 1/4 inch slab I rolled out, curved into small circles and attached to the cups/pot. Originally I had actually made one GIANT circle for the pot handle but it looked super weird (and too fragile) so at the last minute I scraped/chipped it off and made the three little circles. I'm much more happy with that since it is so cute and also ties it better to the cup designs. This was also dipped in the white glaze, and I painted bits of each of the 4 cup colors inside the lid and body to tie it back to the whole set.

This is going to my niece Isabella (but Holly, dont show her the pictures! I want it to be a suprise :) ) She's nearly 3 years old and apparently loves tea parties... so I'm hoping she likes it!