Trying a new Technique

Here comes my second homemade dish. I used a flowerpot saucer as a mould for the plate I made and then I tried something new. When I was roaming crafting blogs I stumbled across this great snowflake tutorial by Eleanor Hendriks of StudioÈLAN. Check out her wonderful ceramics!

Blogger doesn't like me and rotated some of the following pictures, but as they show circular patterns it's not too confusing I hope.

I made a round paper stencil (and noticed afterwards that I cut through the face of a former boss of mine, but hey, that's your risk when you have your picture in the newspaper.) and put it onto the damp clay.

Then I took a brush and applied slip, that I had prepared before of dark contrasting clay, but I reckon it was a tad too wet and fluid.

I removed the stencil way too early, smudged my pattern and resorted to swearing.

Then I added a lot of my usual impressed decoration and let everything dry.

I spent the next morning carefully scratching away the exess clay of the smudges but still the pattern doesn't look as neatly as it should. Both my plate and my bowl are in the pottery already and can get bisque fired soon. It worked quite well to carry them there in their moulds. Free formed items would be more difficult to transport safely.