Clay-pottery 14 January 2013

I almost didn't go this morning because I felt too tired but I'm glad I did because it was just what I needed to sooth and relax myself. I'm waking up really early with the cat (wanting breakfast?) which is part of my tiredness, but also had something happen that annoyed me and couldn't stop thinking about it! Anyway going and working on the clay was very therapeutic and I feel "in my happy place" again.

Silly me, though... in my confused-state this morning, I took a flask of tea in the car (to go to the Quarry) WITHOUT the bung/screw-in-thingy to keep the tea in! I'd screwed the cup on top but that wasn't enough to prevent the tea from slopping all round the boot when I drove around a corner and the flask fell over.. DUH! After cleaning the tea up I did get to be creative so it was all worth the mess.

 I decided to have a go at making pottery book cover.

The pattern is made using an acrylic stamp

 Ta-da! Very time consuming and fiddly, especially getting the pieces to be identical in size but now I've done the first pair I'm sure it''l get easier and faster as I discover "short cuts" to doing things like this.

 Then I got enthusiastic...with plants and natural textures

 Oh..and thanks to the cypress? tree that gave up a few of it's "leaves" for my experimentation lol!

 I lay the leaves on the sheet and then a slab of hand-rolled clay over the top.

 Of course, what I didnt think ablout was the movement of the clay as it went under the rollers. Well, I did but it didn't STOP me running the clay under the roller. Hey, it's really important to understand WHY you DON'T do something a certain way by fully seeing the error of your way!

 Anyway, I flipped the clay over so the leaves were on top,

 added some more and put it under the rollers again.

 Bad move Number Two..

.it was REALLY hard lifting all those little leaves off!

 And there was some cracking where the thicker part of the 

stalk pressed in, so I cut that off and worked around it.

Here's the end result.

I'm looking forward to returning next week

 to work on some more covers.

Time: 5 hours (14/01/14) 

(includes uploading photos to blog etc)

Clay-Pottery