how to handbuild a slab mug // pottery diy

hey friends welcome back to another pottery tutorial it's been sort of a long time since i've last uploaded anything germany went back into lockdown so our studio is closed you would think that that would give me more time to do things like this but um yeah unfortunately and i also took some time off for the holidays but i'm super happy to be back here today filming another video today was another request from you guys so uh we're going to be doing slab building today and we're going to be making a slab mug let's get started [Music] the tools you will need for this project is first a work surface i will be using as always a wedging board check out the video link down below to how you can build one of these yourself you will also need a rolling pin two thickness gauges mine are half centimeter a ruler a knife a paintbrush a scoring tool you can also use a needle tool or fork for this a rib some slip and of course some clay so i will as always be using a stoneware clay this happens to be a speckled stoneware so as you can imagine with slab building we'll start by rolling out a slab [Music] if you are using recycled clay like i am and you also didn't wedge like i didn't you might end up with a few bubbles in your clay in your slab just be sure to poke those and deflate the bubbles before you keep working as always with slabs you want to use your rib to compress the clay this will make the clay stronger and also take care of any texture problems [Music] [Music] okay now we have our rather funny shaped slab looks like a tree so i'm going to make sort of a small like a mini mug lately i've been really digging these kind of miniature mugs that are just like one finger mug and you can put like an espresso or like a small tea inside of it i think they're super cute and really fun but of course this can be sized up to however big you want so i'm going to use my ruler now and i'm going to get i'm going to take this strip here because it's the longest and i'll just start by cutting one straight line and this extra i'm going to keep for later so now i'm going to cut this into a perfect rectangle so i think i'm going to go for 9 centimeters tall which means i will have a cup in the end about eight centimeters tall a nice mini mug so i simply hold the ruler down and measure out nine centimeters mark it with my knife and cut okay and i like to just eyeball this because i'm kind of lazy so i'll just cut more or less 90 degrees it's clay so you don't have to be so precise all right so we have our rectangle and then if we can put it together we can sort of start to visualize how our mug will look so it will be more or less these dimensions and now we need to go about attaching these two sides so i'm going to hold my knife at a 45 degree angle and cut a bevel on the edge here so you can see perhaps how it's starting to taper yeah and now it's very important to flip this over and cut on the same side the same bevel i mean it's the other side but you flipped it so i'm still cutting on my right and then you should have it so that the two pieces of clay overlap and then you can make a seam but without adding extra thickness to your clay you can leave the ends flat and then just overlap the clay like that some people think that adds a cool aesthetic touch but in this case i just want the seam to disappear so now i'm going to lay it back down and now i'm going to do my slipping and scoring so as always start with scoring first i'm going to scratch the clay both directions so if you don't have this fancy tool here you can use a needle tool or you can use a fork i'm going to use my slip so slip is just a dried clay dissolved in water so it started to break down i just put this in here about 10 minutes ago before i started filming when the clay is dry it's going to dissolve really quickly uh if you put wet clay in you'll have to leave it for i don't know maybe a day or so so it always helps to have a little bit of dry clay around so you can mix up a batch of slip just gonna apply it to both sides and now put the two sides together and i'll squeeze it helps to have a rag or towel nearby now your seam is going to look really ugly in the beginning it's going to be very obvious and very sloppy looking don't worry about that you'll need to let the seam sit for a little bit so it can sort of dry off and really connect before you can go about cleaning it up so right now we're just working on making sure that we have a nice strong seam there that the two sides start binding together so i always want to let this sit for about i don't know five ten minutes before i do the actual cleaning up i'm going to do a lot more cleaning up than i just did now but i do want to take a moment to let this slip dry out a little bit so i'm going to let this soak and in the meantime i can make the bottom of the mug so i'm going to use my extra clay that i saved maybe cut it separate from this big chunk here so i want to make the bottom of the mug round so i'm going to just look down from the top to try and get this slab wall as round as i can i don't care about the top i'm just looking straight down at the bottom to try and squidge it all into about as round as as i want to be so now it's very important i'm not going to cut out this bottom yet i'm just going to trace with my knife or you can use a needle tool or maybe a pencil around where it's attaching but i'm not cutting the clay lift it off flip it over and now you can see look i've drawn it only i'm going to take my scoring tool and i'm going to scratch on the inside of that ring that i just drew because this is where our walls are going to attach to the bottom so i can prepare the bottom while i'm waiting for the walls to dry up so i just scored around in a ring and then i'm going to scratch the other way it's always good to score in two directions if you happen to have a dog like i do and you get like little dog hairs always in your clay don't worry about that i used to be so anal about removing the dog hairs from the clay it just burns out i've never noticed any problems with that a lot of material burns out of the clay when it goes into the bisque so the docker is just adding to that it's not going to cause any problems okay and now before i attach these it's been a couple minutes the slip has started to darken in color which means it started to dry and so now i can take the time to kind of smooth this transition i'm taking my thumb i'm just dragging it across [Music] it's still not perfect but of course i'm going to go over the whole mug in the end again so it's going to be fine so now i want to attach these two together so again i'm going to score both sides that i want to attach together so in this case i'm going to score the bottom of this cup [Music] now i'm going to attach them together so again i'm looking down through here and along the sides to make sure that they match up and instead of pushing straight down i'm going to kind of push gently with my hands on it and i'm going to twist it down so it starts to capture it starts to grab at each other just like velcro and i like to flip it over here's my rib and give a few pats with the rib all right now i'm not still not going to cut it off yet i want to give this a few moments to dry out before i do so so now i'll be back in about five minutes so after about five minutes you can cut off the bottom now when i cut the bottom i'm going to put my knife straight down from the wall of the cup this ensures that i have a continuous line from the wall to the bottom you can of course cut an angle if you want to that will add a different detail to your cup now i have cut out my bottom and i'm going to flip it over and i'm going to push the bottom into the walls to try and get rid of that line there [Music] okay so now i have the shape of my mug now i can still change it quite a bit if i want to um clay is still quite plastic so i can shape it as i wish i mean not too much of course but um let's see what we can do here so i'm thinking about pushing out this middle part a little bit so i'm gonna push from the inside and try and fatten up that inner part a little bit i'm wiping it with my outside finger while i do it to try and smooth out any cracks that are appearing as i push it out this clay tends to crack very easily but if this clay can handle it your clay will be able to so i just went up now a step and i'm going to go around once more so i'm starting from the bottom and i'm going to work my way up some people like to use a spoon for this so they'll use a spoon on the inside to kind of make it spoons help keep it like a lot more regular of a curve i'm going to try with my hand we'll see what happens and likewise i can compress the clay if i push the clay into itself the diameter will get smaller so you can see we got a little bit of shaping going on um don't want to ever make the rim too narrow on these things because then when you drink out of it it's going to bump into your nose so maybe i'm going to flare it again a little bit at the top so i'm going to bring that compression down a little bit to try and show the contrast between the slight roundedness and the slight compressedness of this slab mug and then when i've got that all sort of brought in i could just turn the rim out touch watch the cracking make sure you smooth that over don't add water when your clay starts to crack unless it's no longer smoothing when you just use your finger on the clay usually the wetness of the clay as long as your clay is fresh enough the wetness of the clay is enough to smooth out the cracking don't forget that water weakens your clay so only add it if it's really necessary especially with slab building you want to keep the structural integrity of the clay by keeping it dry enough so i think this is a cute little mug very different than what i normally make but of course i would normally make something like this on the wheel and i kind of like he's kind of like a little bit of a fat foot too maybe we can emphasize that a little bit by drawing my finger around the bottom now i'm just having fun what if i i'm really just restyling it's fun kind of thought it would look like a flower a bit but not really it looks like something interesting though i'm really pushing the clay to its limits though right now it's very much cracking so i think i'm gonna quit on the shaping and let's see what a handle can do to this guys because it's not a mug without a handle y'all it's just a tumbler then if you wanted to you could cut the rim to be more flat but i i'd prefer a more organic room okay so now we have a few options here for handles so of course i've got this extra clay here so i can cut out something with this let's see how it looks i can do something like this but i think this mug is starting to look a little bit like beefy like wants to be a strong mug so i'm gonna make a thicker handle than this so if you wanted to attach this you would just slip and score the two points where it will connect i'll show you a different handle and then i'll show you the connection of that handle and that handle will be the way you attach it is exactly the same as you would attach a handle like this so i'm gonna get some new clay for that so i'm going to make a coil handle but i'm going to shape it a little bit too so i'm going to start with rolling out the coil i'm going to try and keep it a little thicker at one end now let's do let's do pick up both ends and then thin in the middle see how that looks it's kind of how i do my throne mugs as well mostly focusing on the center because i want to keep these two sides fat and when you want a dog bone mug shape you have to keep rotating it so you see i'm rotating so i get the different size because if you just roll on one side it will be uneven let's just say that try it and you'll see what i mean i learned that from what's her name a good elephant pottery she also makes amazing online classes really cool lady very impressive i hope someday i'm such a badass with clay this ended up not being a mini bug after all gonna be kind of like a strong man mug actually i like those types of looks best okay so now it's time to attach it and so just like the slab handle i'm going to set it on where exactly where it's meant to be i like to support it with my thumb while i'm doing it so i have my right hand free and i'm going to make a few reference points where it's going to attach i'm just using my knife again to just draw a few reference points so i know where to score and then i'll use my scoring tool again to scrape scrape scrape and slip when you're working with fresh clay like you will with hand building we don't need use much slip sometimes i just score both sides and stick it together depending on what i'm making you'll sort of get a feel for it eventually and when you're hand building two the pieces tend to dry out as you're handling them because your hands are absorbing water um so you might need to use slip you might not depending on how fast you're working and do other factors of course okay so i slipped both sides i scored both sides and now i'm going to stick my hand inside the mug and i'm going to line it up and i'm going to focus on the top first so i'm going to have my inside hand right behind where the handle is attaching to support it because i'm going to be pushing with this hand with quite a lot of pressure pushing it so it attaches what you want to see is the slip kind of squeezing out like that that's what we want once again it's going to look ugly before it looks beautiful so let it look ugly for a minute and squish this side great awesome i kind of love this so once again you always want to let it dry out before you start cleaning it up so i'm gonna wait another five minutes so it can dry out okay so now it's been sitting for a five minutes or so now i'm going to clean up the handle and for this i'm going to use my paintbrush and i'll just smooth it out there and remove any of the extra slip be careful not to add too much water with your paintbrush i actually just wiped it off on a rag i'm going to actually be removing the extra slip and not trying to blend it in because that's just extra anyway your handle should be well attached at this point not enough to grab it by the handle but um well enough that it will stick in the long run another thing i usually do with slab mugs is i will take my paintbrush and kind of go along the inside seam too because there's usually a little bit of extra slip down there you can use your paint brush to get where your finger can't smooth things out and last but not least i will just have an overall look on the piece smoothing out any additional cracks or bits that just seem a little odd uh that always takes a little bit of time but it's well worth your time last but not least you want to sign it use a pencil for that last pot of 2020 i guess cool tomorrow's new year's hey friends it is now 2021 happy new year um it's been about two weeks since i last filmed this video i've since bisked the pot and glazed it and fired it again to 1250 and i want to show you the [Music] result [Music] so that'll be it for this video i hope that was helpful for you i would love to see the projects that you make with these tutorials so you can tag me over at instagram at potter to the people and please comment down below and if there's any other projects you would like me to try all right see you next time guys bye

Channel: Pottery to the People

Views: 145,363

Keywords: handmade pottery, how to make pottery, how to make ceramics, handmade ceramics, pottery, ceramics, clay, pottery studio, how to be a potter, ceramic arts, pottery to the people, make ceramics at home, make ceramic pots at home, make pottery at home, make pottery without wheel, make pottery clay, clay diy, working with clay, handbuilding ceramics, handbuilding clay, slab pottery, handbuilding with slabs, pottery for beginners

Id: 8CRUTP1-u4g

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021