Lyn Hausknecht looks at one of her creations, a hand-built angel figurine. Known for her wheel-thrown stoneware pottery, Lyn also works with hand-built pieces, and she brought some of her tools to the cooperative to discuss the techiques used in hand-built pottery. Behind the angel is a piece of clay that Lyn has rolled out flat. She compares this stage to rolling out pizza dough.

A variety of tools can be used to impress patterns in the the clay. Here Lyn is using a doily and small roller found in baking supply stores to create a pattern in the clay. The clay is the same stoneware clay she uses in her wheel-thrown pottery. Other potential tools on her worktable are stamps, brushes, hardware tools, etc. Nearly anything that can create lines or patterns in the soft clay is useful, she said.

Here Lyn rolls another lace pattern into the clay. The pattern of the doily she used earlier can easily be recognized as well.

Here Lyn is holding a platter that has been decorated with the impressions of various stamps and other objects. The platter was shaped from a flat piece of dough, the impressions made in the surface, and then the edges were carefully rolled to form a rim. The glaze color heightens the effect of the stamped embellishments.

A hand-built platter is displayed next to several pieces of Lyn's wheel-thrown stoneware pottery.

Also discussing her craft at the cooperative, Rosella Spaid holds one of her fused glass pendants over a mirrored tray featuring dozens of her creations.

These pieces have magnets attached to their backs. To make them, Rosella cuts small pieces of glass and stacks them in a miniature "glass sandwich." However, she can't use just any scraps of glass. The pieces must have the same "coefficient of expansion" (COE) rating to allow the glass to smoothly fuse into a seamless piece.

The glass sandwiches are put into Rosella's electric kiln. It's a small kiln, she says, comparing its size to an oversized dorm refrigerator, but its small size doesn't limit its temperature range. She fires the glass at temperatures near 1600 Farenheit. The heat fuses the multiple layers of glass into soft-edged and rounded shapes.

As a further embellishment, she cuts tiny snips of dichroic glass to top some of the glass sandwiches prior to firing. Dichroic glass contains microscopic layers of metal oxides, creating metallic and irridescent effects within the fused glass. The element of surprise is what Rosella finds most appealing about her craft. "I never know what I'm going to see when I open the kiln." she said.