Piggy banks stage 7: more gold, and enamel

So, my first friend had given birth to the baby girl, and the second was due any day when I finally made it back to my painting mentor's house the second week of November. I had 2 days before she left town for a month, and I had to re-do the gold work... and normally you want to do two coats of gold, but I was pretty sure I was going to run out of time.

So, with my wrecked right arm, I discarded the pen I had used, opened a fresh bottle of Liquid Bright Gold, and got to work. This brand of Liquid Bright went on red instead of yellow (another brand goes on green), which, unfortunately, was pretty hard to use on top of a red micron pen... Again, if it's too lightly applied, it doesn't turn out gold.

Fortunately, the end result was pretty good. I managed to get all the gold on in one day, and in the late afternoon, fired them. In the morning, I mixed up white enamel, (using it for the first time ever!!!) applied it, and managed to fire them before I had to leave in the afternoon.

They were actually still hot... had to use oven mitts to get them out of the kiln and then wrap them up in my spare clothes so they didn't cool down too quickly.

Other than the gold turning out not as dark as I wanted (especially on the Chinese characters), I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.

Here's the end result of the Lotus Pig:

 In this lighting you can just see the enamel catching the light differently... there is a dot on every bubble, on the seeds (on top), and in the centres of the lotuses on the sides.

Now here's the final Sleepy Pig which, coincidentally, ended up being a boy, and his name begins with 'T' so that was a total happy coincidence:

 You can't see them very well, but the characters in the middle of each 'T' shape are the "four blessings" (si fu 四福) are happiness (xi 喜), prosperity (lu 禄), longevity (shou 寿), and good luck (good fortune) (fu 福).

Because the parents of this baby are Christian, the characters at the bottom are:

Blessed:

And the ones on the top are:

Faith: 

Happiness: 

Joy: 

Peace: