So here's the thing that's eating me.

I've got this tall bottle form, maybe 40cm, hand-built, it leans like it's tired. I did the base glaze in a copper red, and then over the belly I layered a tin white with a little rutile in it, thinking I'd get these soft clouds breaking over the red. In my head it was gorgeous.

Out of the kiln this morning it's a bruise. The white went grey and pulled up into these hard islands, and the red underneath went almost purple where they meet. Not soft at all. It looks like something that's healing badly.

And the annoying part is, I kind of like it. But I can't tell if I like it because it's actually good, or because I spent three weeks on it and I'm rationalizing.

The real question I keep circling: do you chase the result you designed, or do you take the surprise and redesign around it? Because I can refire and probably get closer to the clouds. Or I can lean into the bruise and make it uglier on purpose, which is more honest to how the piece already feels.

I've been staring at it on the bench for two hours with a coffee that went cold. My grandmother saw a photo and said it looks like a sky before a storm, which did not help me decide anything, but I keep thinking about it.

Anyway if you glaze over glaze people, tell me how you handle two colors that don't want to be friends.