Pottery tools – Ornamento

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You Can Do a Lot With Lines and Dots

By: ornamento.blog June 23, 2022June 21, 2022

Art, pottery, Pottery and Ceramics, pottery studio tipsArt, Decorating Pottery, Pottery tools, underglazesLeave a Comment

Wondering how to decorate your pottery with slip? Make a ton of bowls and experiment! I’ve been decorating small terra cotta bowls with slip and commercial underglaze. I have a lot of bowls to screw up, but my hand is getting steadier and steadier. That’s what practice will do.

I got the needle-tipped squeeze bottles from Amazon. I used to store them with straight pins in the tip. I don’t recommend it. The tips clog and the pins rust. Instead, remove and clean the tips when you are finished and store the bottles with the sealing caps that come with the set. I can’t believe how much easier this makes them to use.

I used some donuts I cut with my Silhouette Portrait 3 in this bowl. Dots and lines followed.

I used a Mayco Designer Liner for the black outline in the above bowl. I will cover these bowls with clear glaze after they come out of the bisque fire. It’s low fire pottery, so they will be fired at Cone 04. Now I just have to come up with ideas for the rest of the bowls!

Make Yourself Some Pottery Tools

By: ornamento.blog July 27, 2017July 27, 2017

Art, DIY, jewelry making tools, Pottery tools, ToolsArt, Jewelry Making Tools, Pottery tools, Tool Making2 Comments

My posts on making jewelry tools have been so popular that I decided to share some ideas for making pottery tools with you. None of these are original but they all present my twist on things. The first one is a clay texture tool. I found a foot massager at a thrift store, took it apart, and now I have two new texture tools plus some to share.

You can also saw up a broomstick a dowel and apply craft foam or hot glue to make patterns to texture clay. There are some examples below.

The glue stick makes a nice texture.

05.GlueRoller

Make a clay cutter to cut canes for Nerikomi. I cut the end off a metal plant hanger and strung it with 24 gauge wire. You can use any form that will keep the wire taut and if the wire breaks, it’s easy to replace.

I love the idea of a tool that will bevel the edges of clay slabs. Enter the beveler! I got the idea to make my own from this site but mine is a bit different. The wood I used is a sidewalk find. I trimmed the smaller piece so the edges were straight. Then I nailed it to the larger piece so I would have two beveling angles, one shallow and a longer one. I didn’t measure anything; I just eyeballed it. I notched the four corners to keep the wire in place and used a screw eye to hold the wire taut. I tried my beveler out and it works beautifully. It really comes in handy when you are beveling curved edges.

And finally, although this is not a pottery tool, I had to include it. I made myself a rawhide hammer from a dog chew following Charles Lewton-Brain’s directions here. My conclusion? Go out and buy one. The dog chews ended up costing about as much as a small hammer and it was much more difficult the make than the instructions let on. But still, I like the way my hammer turned out and I’m using it.

11.mallet