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Hand Building Project: Lace Imprint Casserole
One of the simplest and most rewarding clay pieces I make is a lace imprint casserole dish. This particular piece is eventually headed to my brother. Steps to creating a lace imprint casserole dish: I took a Pyrex style glass casserole dish and created a plaster mold from it. Be prepared that due to shrinking in the kiln, the piece you end up creating from a plaster mold will be smaller than the original piece it is cast from. I rolled out a slab of clay with a rolling pin, then draped the clay over the mold and used a combination of patting with my hand and stroking…
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Grow Your Own Plants for Clay Imprints
In this post I’m going to share some of my favorite plants to use with clay — all of which grow well in my home garden, which is zone 7b and follow up with tips for making imprints with leaves. This blog space may come off as being scattered across multiple hobbies and interests, but it’s an accurate reflection of my life. My day to day time is split up between family and home routines, teaching online graduate classes in engineering, home gardening and making pottery. Those last two are hobbies that have begun a gradual marriage. I make planters for small jades, succulents and indoor mini-gardens, and I grow…
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How to Underglaze Imprinted Clay
This is a simple method to underglaze an imprint in your clay piece, which is a great method for decorating ornaments with vintage letterpress, lace or other one of a kind textures and making the patterns pop. You need an imprinted and bisque-fired piece of pottery, a paintbrush, underglaze, water, and a sponge or rag. While this does waste some underglaze, the underglaze is watered down, so it spreads well. Imprinted clay, bisque fired Watered down underglaze (this is Sea Blue by Speedball) Paint on the underglaze making sure it gets into the imprint. If you are underglazing the imprint in a large bowl, it will save…
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How to glaze the whole ceramic spoon
There’s one question I keep getting via Etsy, on this blog and through email. “How do you glaze your ceramic spoons and keep them from sticking to the kiln shelf?” Clearly, there is a lot of interest in handmade spoons! So how do you glaze the entire ceramic spoon? I use kiln stilts! Kiln stilts consist of metal rods that prop up a piece off the shelf, and a durable one may be used multiple times. I purchased Roselli stilts from Big Ceramic Store. According to Big Ceramic Store, beyond cone 6, metal rods may begin to deform, and may deform at lower temperatures under…
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Pulling Spoons
A while back I shared how I made spoons from a mold. I still have the plaster molds, but after awhile, I found them to be clumsy and frustrating. I’m not patient enough to wait for the mold to release the wet clay. So over the past few days being cooped up inside do to nasty weather, I’ve started back at spoon making without the molds. Instead of pressing clay into a mold, I roll a wedge-shaped coil, press the thicker end around the bowl of an existing spoon and pull the handle. My process is changing and evolving, but these are my basic steps for pulling ceramic spoons. …
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Making Ceramic Ornaments with Cookie Cutters
For several years now, we have made Christmas ornaments from clay. Last weekend I brought my supplies into the kitchen to finish up a couple requests from friends, and my kids descended on the makeshift workspace and demanded clay and all my tools. After a morning of wresting on the living room floor and failed attempts at controlling the noise level in the house, the silence that their focus on the clay brought was amusing, even if it took me five times longer than if should have to roll out a couple Texas ornaments. Basically anyone who has access to clay and a kiln could make charming ornaments with relatively little experience. Several things that…
