Is it Thursday already? This week seems to be flying by so fast.

I’ve been keeping myself occupied with pottery and loved my class Tuesday afternoon. Rachel (the instructor) taught some really cool things about mold making. I’m not one who has ever been hip on molds as I like to create each piece and want everything to be unique. However, she shined the light on carving, and added such great character in these molds that I can see how I could enjoy that journey.

P.S. The only molds that I’ve embraced in the past are the little birds, flowers, leaves and such that I like applying to my finished pieces.

She also touched on slip. Slip is actually clay watered down so thin with water that it becomes the thickness of heavy cream or thicker depending on what you want to do with it. When using a very dark clay body and applying slip (that’s made out of beautiful white porcelain) with a brush over the entire surface of the dark clay body, makes the piece ‘look’ like a white clay body. Then you take your carving tools and begin to carve into the clay and where you carve, the dark clay body shows through. It’s pretty cool.

With slip you can also do what is called slip trailing. Slip trailing is basically painting a design on a piece with either white or colored slip. To make colored slip you can add colorants into the porcelain to change the color. Below is a sample of what someone (not me) has done over a dark clay body. They’ve added a blue colored slip design over the clay and used a clear glaze over the top.