King of the Jungle

I fell in love with a cookie jar at Anthropologie. I always fall in love with things that are just a tad to expensive for me to rationalize- aka a cookie jar with an unfortunate 100$ price tag.

So I looked at him and his adorable nose and little smile and I thought I took ceramics for a while, I could make him and off I went. Luckily my art teacher mother has every available art supply at my command and all I had to do was venture into the basement for massive bags of clay and tools to work. I often times embark on projects much to big for me and end up unable to live up to my own dreams and expectations. But after many many hours of working on day one I finished my lion and base and was pretty happy with the initial coil pot results.

I did realize the general shape of his head was quite circular instead of oval, but I maintain it is impossible to get that shape through coil pots because the entire pot would collapse in on itself. So instead of having a noble egg shaped head my lion is a happy fat one and is very circular.
He dried for a few days and my mom and I fired up the ancient kiln out in the carport. She gave me a disclaimer before I put Mr.Salvador (thats the lion's name) in the kiln there was a very good chance he would not make it out alive due to the age of the kiln and that we had never used it before...ever. To my happiness Salvador survived and a couple weeks later my mom brought home glaze from her art room at school. She sent me a color list and I looked up the glazes online to choose the colors. I based him mainly on the colors of the original pot that I love. So much to my surprise, and dismay, when he survives shaping and drying and firing only to come out of the final glazing a dark brown and purple.
My mother thinks he is adorable. I am slightly less amused with all my hard work resulting in a round lion with a chocolate brown face, purple mane, and way to much glaze.
But he is mine and I made him. Many hours were put into this project to save me money and to pass time. So here he is.

He's not really like the original. Maybe a bit more eclectic and rudimentary, but he will have a place on a shelf in my room at school.