Clay Coil Bowl Part 3

Today you will be finishing your clay coil bowls. In this video I will teach you how to slip and score to add decoration onto the rim of your bowl. Before adding any decoration you need to finish building your bowl if you haven't already. You can add an extra coil or two or even more if you need to today to make your bowl a little bit taller. It should always be flush with the styrofoam bowl though so don't start building it straight up. Instead take the coils out a bit so that you're making a lip on your bowl. That would be the part of the bowl that sticks straight out horizontally not up vertically. Creating a nice lip on your bowl gives you a solid place that you can attach decoration. Just make sure you smooth any of these additional coils very well into the remaining portion of your bowl. You want to be careful not to let the edge of your bowl that lip there become too thin. The thickness of the edge of your bowl or the thickness of that lip should be the same thickness as all of the coils that you were rolling. If you find that yours gets too thin roll out another coil and put another coil on top of that lip and then smooth it out again. Next you can smooth the inside of your bowl using a damp sponge. Share the sponge at your table. Squeeze all the excess water out of the sponge. You want it barely to be wet and then gently at first use the sponge to smooth out the interior of the bowl and go along the edge on the lip as well too and just get it nice and smooth. As you're working turn the sponge so that you're applying a clean area to the bowl. The sponge will pick up some of the clay that kind of sticks up and it'll stick to the sponge so when you turn the sponge to a clean area you're allowing it to pull up some more of the clay. When your bowl is smooth you can start decorating. You need a few materials to be able to decorate your bowl. You have to have some kind of object that can score the clay or carve into it. A needle tool, a pencil, or even a bent paper clip could be really great tools and I'll show you how to do scoring with all three of these. You also need to have some rolled coils. You can kind of play around with the coils and try out some different designs by placing them on top of the rim of your bowl and seeing what you like. Just know putting it on the bowl will not make it stick. To stick the clay design to the rim of your bowl you have to score and slip and I'll show you how to do that. When I decorate my bowl I use coil designs. I think that helps to stick with the theme of what the outside of the bowl looks like. So whatever I make for design I make using lines of clay or coils of clay. I create all of the designs I want to make and just lightly set them on the bowl where I want them to be attached and when I have them all made and it looks how I want it to look then I'll attach them all together. Watch how I do that. Okay now you can see I'm done. I've placed them all down but they're not scored and slipped yet. At this point I can just lift each of them off individually, pop them right off and then I can score and slip to attach them on. Needle tools are the most common tools to score with but we don't have enough for everyone to use one so we're going to see how to use other materials as well but I'll first show you with a needle tool. I lift off a piece, I put a dab of water from my finger on the underneath portion of the clay and then I score it. See how I'm making little lines? Then I set it down where I want it to go and I trace that area and score that area as well so that I'm scoring both sides of where the clay will be attaching. Then I press and smooth to make it very well attached. Then I turn my bowl and I begin with the next piece. This can be a time-consuming process. Watch how you can score with just a simple pencil as well. It really doesn't matter what tool you use. The point is you need to really roughen up both sides of the attachment points. So I'm scoring the underneath side of the design and I'm scoring where it is attaching on the rim of the bowl. If you can see any of your scoring marks after you've attached you can clean that up. You can use your finger, you can use the underside of a pencil, whatever you choose. Okay now I'm going to score with a unfolded paper clip. These we have lots of so this is probably what you'll be using to score your clay. So I'm making lots of lines in many different directions. Again I use water to loosen up the clay. That's the slip. Sometimes artists use clay mixed with water to you know create proper slip but we're just using water because our clay is very soft. Set the design down so we can see exactly where it's going to attach. You can kind of see that from the water and then score up that area as well and when you attach it you want to give it a nice press without ruining your design to really push that clay together. Once it's scored and slipped it is not going to come off and that's a good thing. Okay I'm on my last one now. So as you can see again this can be time consuming so make sure you save plenty of time to score and slip your designs to the rim. Your designs can be simple too. Make sure you also save time to just smooth things out and look it over because sometimes when you score and slip you get little marks from scoring in places that you don't want them and you want to make sure you have time to just clean those things up. You can use some of the plastic tools, you can use the ends of a pencil, the paper clip, your finger, whatever helps you to smooth and refine your project. You will probably finish today and when you are all done you're going to be able to start letting your bowl dry out but we want the bowls to dry out slowly. This helps to prevent cracking. So we're still going to keep our bowl in the saran wrap and in the styrofoam bowl. The difference is that today we're going to let our bag stay unzipped and eventually we're going to take our bowl completely out of the bags and we're going to then let it dry out slowly completely. Take out the extra clay from your bag. Carefully try to fit your bowl into your bag again with making sure that your name's on top just so it's easier to pass out. If it fits in your bag great. Leave your bag unzipped and put it back in the cabinet or the drawer that your class has been labeled. Again the bag should be unzipped. But if your bowl does not fit in the bag anymore we don't want to squeeze it in. Instead you'll take some scissors. In the bottom side of the bag, the side that doesn't have your name on it, make a cut. You can cut it all the way down to the bottom just on that one side and then slip the bag around. You will carefully carry your bag and bowl to your class's location either in a cabinet or in the drawer. Following that, clean up your space. Help your neighbors if they need some help because hopefully today will be your last day working on your clay coil bowls.