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What Is The Most Unconventional Item You Have Ever Used To Decorate Or Create A Piece Of Clay Art?


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What is the most unconventional item you have ever used to decorate or create a piece of clay art?We talk a lot about decorating. Now there are all types of commercial stamps and roulettes available. Do you have any unique tools you've have been using to decorate your work like seed pods, buttons, bric-a-brac? If you can show us a sample 50k pic. but not necessary.

Marcia

 

 

 

 

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I use a lot of found objects. Once I in college I decorated a piece with a metal door stop. The back of the stop where it mounted on the wall had 3 holes and a lot of metal curves on the inside of the casting.

I also love a small adding machine wheel that I got 30 years ago. It is just a wheel on a metal arm. The wheel has numbers on it in order. It will put a line about a 1/16 inch wide on a pot with a series of numbers in order. It works well for organic looking lines with curves. Combined with circular impressions from dowel rods it looks like plants etc. However, when you get close your see the numbers. A nice surprise.

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Pres, do you have a picture of the machine arm, or a piece you used it on?

 

Chris, the hot glue on PVC is an awesome idea!

In answer to your questions. No I do not have any pieces laying around that used the adding machine piece. However, I did take a few minutes yesterday to show you what I am talking about. Hopefully I have the space for these. These should be pretty self explanatory. Because they are metal, best used in leather hard or stiffer cheese hard clay. Wet clay they drag. You really want them to roll. At the same time angling them will get you thick to thin calligraphic lines. The flowers are simple, just a dowel end with triangular file cuts. taper the edges a bit.

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nice stems!

 

my studio is stuffed with things that other people look at and say "Huh??"  the one that is unique is a bracket fungus from a tree where i used to live.  it has an underside that looks like the bottom of a mushroom cap but is stiff enough to press into clay.  the effect is wonderfully like an undersea water plant or coral and i use it as one of many shapes on ocean themed pieces.

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Something I've been tempted to do, but I've not tried yet, is to press leaves into the body of a pot, vein side down, and then use the mishima technique to bring out the veinous pattern of the leaves in a contrasting colour.  Obviously a coarse veined leaf like a maple would be necessary, but i think the effect could be really interesting if executed properly.

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Everything is a potential clay tool. Before i throw anything away i look at it and say will this make a good impression in clay? A trip to the dollar store, hardware store, kitchen gadget store and of course the thrift store can net you a bevy of new tools.

 

A tool story: i teach handbuilding to adults. I had a student wanted to make faux driftwood from clay. I told her i had the perfect tool to make bark and headed out the classroom door. She thought i was headed to my truck to get a tool but instead i came back in with mulch chunks from the plant bed outside the classroom. They made the perfect bark texture and the perfect broken wood texture, the best tool for making faux driftwood you could find.

 

Now the most unconventional tool...i'm stumped...i don't know what a conventional tool is. I use a lot of random objects...pen caps, toy car tires, a tangle of jute, the bracelets i'm wearing, screws, springs, twine wrapped dowels, shells, pasta, ferns, strings of beads, keys, rope... hold it i know....my most unconventional....gutter guard...its a diamond patterned wire mesh that comes in small rolls to lay on top of your gutters to keep leaves out...makes great scale patterns when making fish or a background lattice pattern when using a floral theme.

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Something I've been tempted to do, but I've not tried yet, is to press leaves into the body of a pot, vein side down, and then use the mishima technique to bring out the veinous pattern of the leaves in a contrasting colour.  Obviously a coarse veined leaf like a maple would be necessary, but i think the effect could be really interesting if executed properly.

 

It's probably pretty hard, to get your hand on maple leaves up there...

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tyler, there is a potter who comes to the St. Petersburg Mainsail show in april.  he does this to big and small pots.  he washes them with dark oxide and other things similar to mishima  but the pot is basically unglazed.  fabulously beautiful.  this year i gave him a tiny pinecone (i think) from some trees at the beach.  they make a star pattern when the end is pressed just deeply enough.  i can't wait to see what he will do with them by next april.

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Everything is a potential clay tool. Before i throw anything away i look at it and say will this make a good impression in clay? A trip to the dollar store, hardware store, kitchen gadget store and of course the thrift store can net you a bevy of new tools.

 

A tool story: i teach handbuilding to adults. I had a student wanted to make faux driftwood from clay. I told her i had the perfect tool to make bark and headed out the classroom door. She thought i was headed to my truck to get a tool but instead i came back in with mulch chunks from the plant bed outside the classroom. They made the perfect bark texture and the perfect broken wood texture, the best tool for making faux driftwood you could find.

 

Now the most unconventional tool...i'm stumped...i don't know what a conventional tool is. I use a lot of random objects...pen caps, toy car tires, a tangle of jute, the bracelets i'm wearing, screws, springs, twine wrapped dowels, shells, pasta, ferns, strings of beads, keys, rope... hold it i know....my most unconventional....gutter guard...its a diamond patterned wire mesh that comes in small rolls to lay on top of your gutters to keep leaves out...makes great scale patterns when making fish or a background lattice pattern when using a floral theme.

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With you here,everything that is not welded down, says my partner, but to the innocent drifter into my space, a couple of fresh and not so fresh whole fish for a time of nature printing! And for the long haul, the knuckle bones of kangaroos and wallaby teeth for  patterns.

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Something I've been tempted to do, but I've not tried yet, is to press leaves into the body of a pot, vein side down, and then use the mishima technique to bring out the veinous pattern of the leaves in a contrasting colour.  Obviously a coarse veined leaf like a maple would be necessary, but i think the effect could be really interesting if executed properly.

 

It's probably pretty hard, to get your hand on maple leaves up there...

 

Real tough, Benzine. ;)

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Something I've been tempted to do, but I've not tried yet, is to press leaves into the body of a pot, vein side down, and then use the mishima technique to bring out the veinous pattern of the leaves in a contrasting colour.  Obviously a coarse veined leaf like a maple would be necessary, but i think the effect could be really interesting if executed properly.

 

It's probably pretty hard, to get your hand on maple leaves up there...

 

Real tough, Benzine. ;)

 

Tyler;

That was humour he was using there. As though we don't have maple leaves in Canada.

TJR.

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Tyler;

 

That was humour he was using there. As though we don't have maple leaves in Canada.

TJR.

 

 

Yeah, I know, I was trying to keep the humour going.  My use of words failed me :P  "Real tough to find" might have been clearer.

 

Benzine, don't laugh, but I've been known to make maple syrup.

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  • 2 months later...

I just started using the plastic bottom of a Home Depot paint roller liner for a dotted background imprint.  The little rounded dots make a very clean, crisp impression in a slab of clay...with the help of a light spray of Pam or WD40.

 

I keep a box of found objects for this sort of thing...and it definitely could use some organization (think Fibber Magee's Hall Closet):

 

 

 

Paul :)
 

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