Saturday 11 April 2015

Gold RImmed Stamped Clay Bowls


I saw this blog over on pinterest for stamped clay bowls and really loved the idea, I also needed to make something for a belated mother's day present for when I head back to the UK in the Easter hols. So I thought this would be perfect. But in my normal haphazard style, mine are of course far from the perfection of Gathering Beauty's bowls. But I still love them and think my mother will too.

WHAT YOU NEED




Air Dry Clay
A Stamp of Some Kind (mine was a clear plastic one but you can use wooden mounted rubber ones too, they can also be any size, you will just need to stamp more).
Ink
Gold Cermamic Paint
Rolling Pin
Knife
Sandpaper
Paintbrush
White Spirit


First of all I made a mount for my stamp because I did not have one of those plastic blocks big enough, and I was trying to do this on the cheap.


You can see it here inked up and ready to go.


Then get a chunk of clay, knead it then roll it out until the desired thickness.

There are two ways of going about the next bit, either you can stamp the rolled out clay, or you can cut it to shape first then stamp it. I found doing it the first way (as the other blog did), meant that I had scraps of clay with ink on it, thus making it more or less useless to use again. So I decided it was better to cut it to size first.


So put a bowl over it that is the desired size and cut around with a knife.


Voila!

Now stamp it. Remember to ink up your stamp thoroughly each time and apply equal pressure.


You will then have a stamped disk, as you can see my ain't perfect (but it is part of the charm!)


Then press it carefully into a bowl. Do this evenly and gradually to avoid distorting the pattern.


Keep going until you use all your clay and all your bowls!

You then need to leave them to dry, I did this before work and by the time I came home (7 hours later in my very warm apartment) they were ready to turn out.


If you look carefully on this one you can see the rim is whiter where it is dry and the rest is still grey. It is not quite ready to be turned out.


This is how they looked when I left them to dry over night.


Once totally dry (about 24hours later) I gave them all a good sanding and evened out the rims as much as I felt like.


See, Much neater.


I then painted all their rims gold.


Some of them however had traces of blue ink on the bottom so I thought I would paint some of the bottoms gold too. Also as I am giving them as presents in sets of two, I thought this would make it more exciting!


Two coats later and I am done.




I am quite happy with how they turned out and will deff do this again. It was good fun and fairly cheap. And I think they look beautiful!

Next time I would like to get another stamp and colour to mix it up a bit. I nearly went with another colour because this is the same as the colour Gathering Beauty used, but its also the colour of my current bed and future bedroom AND my other choices of red or purple would not have been as appreciated by the intended recipients. Choosing another colour purely to be different seemed more daft than using the same! But if it had been just for me I would have done red for sure. 

Here is a pretty song






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