2 ways to make ceramic spoons + spoon glazing tips

[Music] hi friends so today i'm going to do another project for you and this one is actually a project that was requested uh by you guys so definitely leave a comment down below if there's any particular project you want me to try uh of course i can't do everything i am working from home but um anything that that is possible to make from home i'm very happy to do it and show you guys how so let's get started so today's project i want to show you how to make a spoon now there's a bunch of different ways to make a spoon out of ceramics but i know two ways that i think are quite effective so the first way what you need are a model spoon so this is going to be your uh sample we're going to make a spoon sort of more or less in this shape you need a rib you need a rolling pin a knife and of course some clay so first i'm going to start with rolling out some clay you don't need very much clay i would guess this is about 200 grams as always when you're rolling it make sure you're not rolling it all in one go make sure you're flipping and you're turning the clay as you go and with a spoon you don't want to get too thin right so here's our rolled out piece now as always when you roll a slab you want to compress the clay so i'm going to use my rib to kind of stroke the clay and this helps the clay not to crack later on so now we want to just cut out the basic spoon shape so i'm just going to lay the spoon on top of it and cut out a rough shape so i'm leaving a lot of extra room around it just so i can start to get the clay a bit smaller and more the shape that we want okay now i'm going to flip the side the spoon upside down we're going to use the spoon as basically a form here so i'm going to lay the clay on top of the spoon and start to shape it around so that it sits flat on the spoon decided to make it a little bit shorter than the spoon because a lot of long thin ceramic doesn't work so well so now i'm going to let this sit for about 10 minutes so we can firm up a little bit before we go in and cut up the final shape so in the meantime we can move on to the second spoon project uh but with this project i'm going to make the round part of the spoon separate from the stem of the spoon for the second spoon project you'll need some water a paint brush a scoring tool if you don't have a scoring tool you can also use a fork or a needle tool and a sponge so first i'm going to start with the round part and i'm going to take a small ball about the size of a strawberry all right i'm going to roll it in my hand until it's quite round yeah then i'm gonna push it down onto the table until it's a little bit flatter still quite round but a little bit flatter right and then what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna stick my thumb right in the middle of it to start to make like a donut shape but of course i don't want to go through because otherwise we have a leaky spoon so i'm going to just kind of dig my thumb around it a little bit to um bring it about a half centimeter from the bottom maybe three quarters of a centimeter to the bottom then i need to start to make this into more of a bowl shape now so i'm going to start pinching the clay into a bowl so i start at the bottom and i'm going to just bring my finger all the way around so i'm pinching between my finger and my thumb and i'm just kind of going around as you start to get these cracks in your clay that's totally normal um you just want to smooth them out as you go this is kind of a cracky clay but i like to use it because it's so beautiful in the end and bringing it into more of a bowl shape now i'm just going to shape it with my hands a little bit to get it a little bit more smooth and rounded [Music] okay now we have like a tiny little bowl here right so that part is done we just need to add the stem now and so i'm going to take another similarly sized piece of clay and i'm just going to make a long coil so i'm going to start by rolling it in my hands a little bit to get it bit thinner and then as it gets a bit thinner i'm going to start rolling it on the table the key to rolling a coil is that you spread your fingers as you are uh pushing the clay back and forth and you want to not put so much downward pressure um while you're rolling the coil most of your pressure is back and forth and you just let the weight of your hands uh thin out the clay um if you do too much pressure that's when you start to get these like flat coils and it starts to flop flop flop you need to um not put so much pressure and just roll it back and forth and the stretching of your fingers will just bring the coil out naturally so i wouldn't go too thin with this this is a bit thicker than a pencil anything long and thin in ceramics is notoriously fragile so i always air on the side of making a little bit thicker i mean remember that it is going to shrink down again once it's finished okay now i'm just going to kind of think about how i want this do i want it to attach up at the top or at the bottom i think it's obvious that i should do it at the top so i'm actually going to then flip it over and uh i think what i'm going to do just to strengthen the stem a little bit i'm going to bring this clay up onto the bowl a little bit so that i'm not just butting them up against each other because that's going to make a very weak seam so i'm going to allow the stem to kind of come into the circular shape and form kind of an interesting design element as well but before i do that i'm going to quickly shape the end so then like always with attaching two pieces of ceramics together you want to score so we're going to use the scoring tool to scratch the part where the stem attaches to the bowl of the spoon and also the stem itself so these two parts that come together they'll get scratched and i will add a touch of water to each of them to help that process along so place them and then hold it with my fingers on the inside to kind of push the two together make sure i get a really good attachment here then you can just set it aside let it dry out a little bit before you continue to clean it up okay now we can go back to our original spoon so it's a little bit stiffer at this point and now i'm gonna go in it's a little bit fragile but i'm gonna go in now and cut the rest of it off so you can just follow the line of the original spoon or you can make like an interesting pattern to on the stem itself i think what i'm going to do is kind of bow it out a little bit so i'm going to first draw it with my knife i'm going to do something like [Music] [Music] so once you have your spoon shake final just put it back on your spoon mold and i'm gonna let it settle into the shape of the spoon again [Music] and then i'm gonna let this dry pretty well i mean it's very thin so it's gonna actually dry pretty fast um but uh maybe like an hour or something would do um or you can put in front of the fan for five ten minutes just check on it once you can't bend it so easily once it's not so floppy that's when you know it's finished okay so these two spoons have uh actually chilled underneath the fan for a little bit um it's been maybe 20 minutes under the fan and they're quite stiff so i'm not going to put too much weight on it but it's like it's not falling immediately down um but i'm gonna be still very careful with these pieces um i just want to do some final touches now to clean them up and then i'll let them dry fully now anything with thin clay is very very delicate so you just have to be careful doing this part not destroying your piece so i'm just going to add a touch of water so you don't want to add too much water at this stage i'm just doing enough that will only saturate the surface of the clay and not get down into the clay because otherwise you'll just have undone the drying process when there's little nooks and crannies that you can't get into it's always helpful to use a wet paint brush so i'm pretty happy with this piece i'd say it's pretty much done i don't dare uh continue messing with it because um danger zone um so i'm just going to flip it over and let it dry uh in its rested place where it's completely supported now i'm doing this one last because i'm actually really afraid of this one this is so thin and uh dangerous so um just going to very gently go over all these edges so my goal with a sponge is just to kind of round the edges so that they're not so sharp anymore but my goal is also to not let it get too wet and then with this one i'm just going to let it dry on top of the spoon form to so that it keeps its shape right and that's that's it so you can sign them if you want you can add carvings or decorations on them if you want but i would just let these dry out now and they can get ready to be put into the kiln so some tips about glazing them i mean obviously you cannot um glaze the whole thing and put it into the kiln because then it will melt to the kiln shell so um you have to be kind of clever when you're when you're going about glazing spoons um one thing you can do is you can put them on stilts so um there are these little metal things that can go inside the kiln that can prop your piece up um i'm not gonna do this because this is dangerous so there's these little stilts that you can put um your piece on and that allows the glaze to be covering the whole piece but it separates the piece from the kiln shelf and they don't usually stick to the stilts however you do usually end up with marks from the kiln stills themselves so i personally don't like using them because you always end up having to sand them down or doing something to fix that problem um so my favorite way of doing glazing with spoons is you build sort of a ceramic um holder for your pieces so you just need to like make like out of uh clay a tube to hold your piece so like you can just take a block of clay put a hole in it and that will hold your piece up like this right in in the kiln that will hold your piece up of course then you cannot glaze the whole piece so you can glaze all the way up until it's going to touch the clay uh if you glaze the whole thing then it will stick to that clay support system um so that's my favorite way of glazing spoons i don't make spoons regularly i've just done it a couple of times so i i haven't experimented too much with making them i'm sure that there's other ways to glaze spoons but i would really recommend the standing upright method rather than the kiln stilts but of course both are possible um and if you're not going to be using your spoon to eat out of which most people don't use ceramic spoons to actually eat out of you know you're gonna use it to like scoop your coffee or i don't know whatever you use ceramic spoons for you could just leave it on glaze then i mean if you're not literally putting into your mouth or using it with like an acidic thing that you're going to eat later so you don't need to glaze it actually um that might make it a little bit easier for you so go forth and make spoons i guess i don't know how do you end videos so i bet with that demonstration was helpful for you i hope that you guys have a lot of fun making spoons and if you do make them uh please post on instagram and tag me because i would love to see them so you can find me at pottery to the people um so see you later see you next time

Channel: Pottery to the People

Views: 51,172

Keywords: make ceramic spoons, ceramic spoons, spoon glazing, spoon glazing tips, make a ceramic spoon, clay spoon, clay spoons, stoneware, porcelain spoons, diy pottery spoon, handmade spoon, handmade clay spoon, how to make a spoon, make a clay spoon, spoon making, pottery for beginners, handmade pottery, ceramics for beginners, beginner ceramics, beginner pottery, beginner clay, clay for beginners, ceramic spoon, make ceramic spoon, make clay spoon, stoneware pottery

Id: hntMDmgT_7E

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020