During this first ceramics unit, I think that I was able to learn a lot of the basic techniques of creating handles, foots, lids, and even learn to experiment with different glaze options. I think i really enjoyed the fact that there wasn't many requirements to the pinch pots allowing room for a lot of creativity. The mini, beach themed cup was first inspired by my love for the beach. I was able to come up with this idea when I looked at my phone during my brainstorming and saw my beach wallpaper. As this was my first pinch pot, I was very nervous while making it which made me become obsessed about making everything “perfect”! However, this lead to a few disappointments here and there as I found that some of my ideas didn’t work quite well. To be honest, the sun that seems to be punched out was actually a lucky accident for me. In the beginning, I had wanted to just have a plain circle carved out the top to make it like a sun. This unfortunately didn’t go as planned when I miscalculated and carved it out too close the top. In my attempt to fix it by sticking the piece of clay back on, I found that I actually liked the way that the piece just fit snugly in there. It actually made my sun look a bit abstract. In the end, with the colours that turned out better than I expected, this became my second favourite pinch pot. On creating the door sign pinch pot, I was able to combine a lot of my dorky likings. My love for the circus (the circus theme ball), my love for green and red (the colour glazes I used), and mostly my weird liking of door signs (the door sign pinch pot itself). Thus, this was a dorky but fun pot to create. For the cookie monster mug I really enjoyed the process of making it as it brought back my childhood nostalgia. Being a fan of milk and an even bigger fan of cookies, I combined these two things together in order to make this cup. Because this was just the second time I was glazing and I was still confused about the differences between underglazes, matte glazes, and overglazes, it was difficult for me to chose the perfect colours identical to that of cookie monster. This was especially so because there were just so many blues to chose out of: medium blue”, “china blue”, “blue”, “sky blue”, etc. The mini teacup I made was actually one of my most challenging pinch pots. Wanting to create a teacup that was elegant and thin, I struggled a lot to make it as thin as I wanted without widening the mouth of the cup. My inspiration for making the candlelight, heart dice came from my love of anything related to pretty lights including lava lamps, fireworks, candles, glow sticks and so on. Stuck on the idea of wanting to create something in relation to this, I decided to create a mini dice with hearts to replace the dots. From the hearts, the light of a candle placed inside the dice could come out to form a pretty design. I think that this was a pretty successful pinch pot as it came out just the way I had imagined it while brainstorming. Finally, my last pinch pot was the carved out flower base centred on the theme of flowers. In correlation to the theme, I used floral patterns on the sides of the vase to make my pot look a bit abstract. Then, for my lid, I made a large flower, using carved out petals. This, I think was my favourite pot, as it was a combination of challenging, abstract, and artsy! In all, I think this first ceramics unit was a success in terms of being able to experiment with a lot of different things and developing a love for ceramics.