5 Unique Ways to Use Stencils (SECRET BONUS VIDEO TOO!)

[Music] hi everybody this is ann i'm always on the lookout for new and clever ways of approaching decorative pottery designs i've noticed a lot of people using stencils lately many of them are created using fancy cutting machines like cricut and silhouette i don't have one of those machines but i do have a lot of commercial stencils in my studio so i thought i'd play around with them and discover some unusual ways to use them for interesting designs first i'll demonstrate the most evident straightforward way that i use stencils on clay on a rolled out slab i place the stencil over the clay i roll the stencil onto the fresh clay so the clay becomes raised inside the cutouts i then apply under glaze over the raised areas sometimes i use a sponge or a brush to apply this time i'm just gonna finger paint [Music] when i remove the stencil i'm left with the crisp design to hand build with now i'm going to call that my jumping off point now let's try this for the stencils i'll use this leaf pattern and this geometric pattern i laid down the leaf pattern and rolled it into the clay [Music] i then layered the geometric pattern over the organic leaf pattern and rolled that over the top [Music] [Music] instead of under glaze i made up a batch of stiff slip by slaking down drags from my reclaim bucket i smeared it over the two stencils with a spatula so it went down into the holes [Music] to smooth out the clay i wet my fingers and smoothed it gently over the designs [Music] i gently remove the two stencils for this neat design ooh i was just thinking i could have reversed these two stencils for a whole separate design and here's a vase that i hand built with it i bisque fired and glazed it with celadon sky the angles of the vase give you a nice wide surface perfect for displaying the details of the design so that idea works well when you can roll the stencil on a flat surface but what do you do if the piece isn't flat so here's one solution when this piece was bone dry i laid down the stencil over the area where i wanted it and held it tightly with my fingers i then took my needle tool and scrafted the interior edges of each little hole [Music] i then used a small thin brush to apply shades of yellow and red to those holes this graffitoed borders helped to keep the underglaze contained inside of those tiny areas [Music] now all i had to do was paint the black body and antenna you can see that i applied a slipped stencil design to the clay before i hand built it to act as a background for the colorful butterflies [Music] i bisque fired it and then applied a clear over the stenciled areas and i put chamois to the sides in the collar [Music] okay this next idea is going to blow your mind first i rolled out a sheet of wax paper to protect my work surface i'm going to show you how to create a geometric textured stencil on the bottom of the section of this leaf stencil for the geometric design i'll use these honeycomb hexagons i had this mold building liquid rubber that i purchased at the local craft store i simply scooped out a little of the rubber with my finger and spread it out over top of all the holes until i had a thick layer over the top the good thing about the rubber is that it's pretty stiff it doesn't seem to run underneath the other stencil now when i take the top layer off you can see all the hexagons and when i lift the leaf stencil you can see the raised hexagons surrounding the holes of the leaves now let the rubber dry for about an hour until it becomes transparent now this is cool the wax paper has the positive raised area of the leaves on it and i bet you could roll that out onto the clay and get an imprint another good thing about the rubber is that before it's dry you can easily clean the hexagon stencil with water now here's a different stencil combination where the rubber is already dry now i'll show you how to use it i started with a smooth slab and laid the stencil rubber side down [Music] i rolled the stencil down into the wet clay [Music] i used my finger to apply baby blue underglaze to the surface [Music] [Music] i then applied a little of the intense yellow you know the blue and the yellow make green [Music] i remove the stencil and you can see the under glazed swirls appear like they're floating on the top and the rubber impress geometric pattern appears recessed [Music] [Music] here's a cute little sushi plate that i created with that same pattern that impressed pattern adds a level of depth that i think is so elegant here i just add a clear glaze to it and fired it to cone five [Music] finally i thought i'd show you how to reverse the sequence to emphasize the negative space of the design let's see if this works both on a wet slab and a bone dry slab first i applied under glaze to the entire wet slab then i did the same thing to the dry slab [Music] i let the under glaze completely dry i placed the stencil over the under glaze and held it in place with my fingers i dampened the sponge and gently rubbed it over the design to remove the under glaze i was careful to keep flipping the sponge to a clean edge to remove more under glaze another bonus is that as you wipe you're removing the top layer of clay giving the design a 3d quality [Music] first on the wet slab i remove the stencil to find this crisp negative image of the bird now i can still bend the clay for hand building let's see if it works on the bone dry slab i had to rub it a bit harder to remove the under glaze but i finally got it off [Music] there that looks great [Music] i hope these designs spark some ideas about how you can layer underglaze slip or figure out even more ways to use your stencils i'd like to thank the newest members of our little street pottery research facility team if you'd like to join the team and earn a title click on the super thanks button or the link to buy me a coffee if you liked our video please like share and subscribe to our channel i'll see you next time in the studio [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Little Street Pottery

Views: 7,371

Keywords: asmr, clay, easy hand building pottery, easy pottery projects, easy pottery projects for beginners, free pottery projects, handmade pottery, how to make pottery, making pottery, oddly satisfying, origami pottery, pottery, pottery design ideas, pottery ideas, pottery lessons, pottery wheel, satisfying, wheel throwing, using stencils on pottery, how to use stencils, easy pottery designs, using stencils on clay, stencil techniques

Id: AQD-yhStjIs

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022