Glazing for Numpties

I never imagined 3 years ago I'd be making my own glazes following a recipe. There were long words like Nepheline Syenite and Gillespie Borate, Dolomite, Frit 3124, Cobalt and Copper Oxide. And then there's the food safety issue that's a whole other can of worms. It all sounded very scary, so I stuck to my commercial glazes for a while longer until curiosity got the better of me
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For Christmas hubby bought me my first glazing recipe book by John Britt. I read it cover to cover two or three times and frightened myself witless! "I can't do this"  "I'm not clever enough" "I don't understand it" All that negative self-talk kept the book gathering clay dust on the shelf
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Then curiosity got the better of me and I thought what if I just started out making something simple like a clear glaze? There were a few to choose from but one jumped out at me called Kittens Clear. How could I not make that, with a name like Paw Print Pottery?! So I went at it
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My local pottery supplier (CTM in Doncaster)  had all the raw ingredients and equipment I needed so I set to it in my shed, just a small 1kg batch.  Armed with a decent set of digital weighing scales from Amazon, some goggles and a good quality dust mask suitable for the job I tentatively started making my first batch of glaze. It took me a while to figure out what specific gravity was and how to measure it (its a number that gives you the viscosity of the glaze) but Youtube tutorials were great for that
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Success! I couldn't quite believe it when I tried it out on some jewellery. It didn't have any pits or flaws and it made my jewellery look really beautiful. Wow did I just achieve that?
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This spurred me on to create a white glaze from that clear glaze adding what's called an opacifier. Generally something like tin oxide or zirconium silicate. Again the white worked! Success number two!
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Now, what if I added a colorant? something like cobalt oxide to make it blue or copper oxide to make it green. So I gave that a whirl and hey presto I suddenly had a basic blue and a basic green glaze. Then I tried ceramic pigments - Mason stains seem to work well for me and I ended up with a beautiful orange and even a lilac
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I was on a roll now
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Suddenly I felt more confident to try more complex glaze recipes from the book and a year on I'm now mixing and matching many of them and creating new, to me, glaze combinations
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So whilst I don't yet have the knowledge to tweak the recipes considerably, I'm beginning to grasp the basics and having real fun with it
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So my aim in this little ramble is to encourage any newbie hobby potters like me, to start simple and don't be afraid to try
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My only suggestions would be

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

Know that in the course of your experimentation you are going to have A LOT! of failures and be ok with that

Don't be afraid to ask questions -  There are some great Facebook groups out there with helpful friendly experienced Potters eg 'Exploring midrange glazes together using John Britt's book' is a wonderful bunch of people
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Honestly, if this numpty can do it, you can too!