when with glazing salt and pepper shakers you have to be really careful not to get glazed in the holes at all on the shakers when you glaze if you're using a brush very carefully go around the holes with a tiny brush or if you're going to dip I'm going to show you a trick where you can use toothpicks that have been lightly dipped in wax and inserted into the holes if you're going to dip if you ever get glazed in the hole so I usually tell my students to turn the shaker over run water through it and really make sure that the hole is clean if you just take a needle tool and try to clean the hole well usually for my students that doesn't work usually there's enough residue with in the shaker hole that it will seal up during the firing and for my students please remember that one of the requirements for your shaker Set is that they must remain functional the holes should never be sealed up so to dip a shaker the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to grab a toothpick I'm just going to cut some toothpicks in half because it's a little easier to deal with them when they're a little bit taller if you're dealing with the big lone toothpick sticking out of the hole sometimes they're little cumbersome and they get in the way after I have my toothpicks cut then I'm going to be dipping them in wax and note that I have either paper towel or some sort of a tissue to set them on I'm going to dip them in wax and I'm just going to set them on that surface to kind of dry I usually do not put the toothpick in the shaker while the wax is still wet because then it will kind of pool around the hole and you'll get too much wax on the pot that the idea is not to wax the actual hole itself I'm just waxing the toothpick so when I go to remove the two pick it will work a little bit better and not leave so much squeeze residue behind just for reference and you activists that I choose to use is the axe nur wax resist it is a water-soluble fax resist that I like a lot and here I have a whole bunch of toothpicks that have been dipped and now I'm just going to let them sit for a while let them dry and when they dry I'll come back and I'll insert them into my shakers okay I've given it some time now so the wax on my toothpicks has dried and now I'm just going to insert these in the hole and again the reason that I allow the wax to dry first is if you put it on the word put it in the holes while the wax is still quite wet you'll get a little overflow wax really and it'll interfere with your glazing so I'm going to go ahead and do this neat oh and just as a side note I don't use square to picture this I only use round teeth okay now that I have my toothpicks in my shakers I do want to make one point I want to explain be very careful when you're handling wax say the wax cover toothpicks if you have wax residue on your finger and you touch the shaker someplace besides the bottom you will get a spot of wax and it will resist your glaze so my students just be very very careful make sure your hands are clean wash them with soap after you handle anything with the wax so I'm going to go wash my hands and then I'll mix it my glaze and I'll show you how I'm going to dip it and just to reiterate the only reason that I would use the toothpicks is if I'm going to dip if I if I were just going to paint the shaker I would just carefully paint around the holes with a small paintbrush now students make sure that you are mixing up your glaze well I can't tell you the number of times that someone will come to a glaze bucket and they'll ask someone else hey did you already mix this up and then they won't mix it themselves that's never a good idea because you need to be responsible make sure it's actually well mixed because you want your results to be good so I have wax the bottom down here and up about an eighth of an inch I can put my fingers in the hole of the shaker and I'm just going to submerge it bring it back out again and I'm going to wait until the glaze get just a little bit drier before I take those out if I take it out right now it could be running enough that the glaze would run in there which I don't want that to happen and I actually have to hold it until it's dry enough that I can lift it off my finger I don't want to get fingerprints on there and that's as easy as it is we're going to take those out in just a minute okay I've dipped my shakers and the glaze is now dry enough that I can handle it and I'm going to remove my toothpick if you wanted to save and wash your toothpicks you could I usually don't bother just given it what I have to worry about the wax having come off that's the the wax does allowed to kind of slide out nicely without having much effect on the blade and just check if you have any areas where maybe you have a communal accumulation right around that bowl you just kind of knock off any burrs that you might have and then of course I'm going to make sure that my bottom is sponged clean oh if you're looking at this and you're thinking why is that blue this was marbled clay I have another video that you can look at for how I did the marble clay it is a fun technique where you stain the clay but this is how when you take your toothpicks out so I'll finish doing these and then I'll get these fired and I'll show you what they look like everyone smile despite my best efforts with glazing I may get a hole which will get clogged up in this case I'm pretty sure it clogged up because this shaker top is concave and I think glaze just ran in down the sides it obviously is best to try to avoid that but if that happens you can use something like this this is a great little grinder bit this is from CI products I have several things from CI products they are fabulous you've seen many of them in other videos like the sticky bat and the sticky pad and I have other various grinders that I'll show you but this particular little bit is great I'm just going to use my my dremel type tool is actually riolu brands but I did want to show you a little trick for putting the stopper in you can just try to shove it in with your finger but if you wanted to take say something like a pair of needle nose pliers it helps you to encourage the stopper to go in oops if you do that just pull it out again there we go and just get it seated right in there so it's up inside that at all and that's the result of firing after my dipping in the glaze using the toothpicks