Le Veauthibault 2010 - making paperclay

When I was in France  last month I also made my own paperclay. As it is a bit messy I preferred to make it in France and not in my own tiny atelier. I had some pieces which were not suitable for firing after drying and kept those to make paperclay. Of course you can buy ready made paperclay, but this way you can reuse failed pieces (so long as they have not been fired)  and create something new with them. I do like working with paper clay and paper porcelain as it stronger due to the fibers.

The recipe is easy:

1 empty box for 6 eggs

750 grams of dry clay

0,5 liter of warm to hot water

Tear the box to small pieces and put in a bowl, add the hot water and mix well. 

Grind to dry clay to as fine a powder as possible. 

I just batched it with a rolling pin until it look like this:

Add the powder clay to the paper slush and mix well.
If you want you can add a stain at this point. In this case the clay is antracite clay so not much use to add a colorstain to it, but works well for porcelain and white clays.

Put all unto a slab of plaster (you can make this yourself or buy ready made from some DIY stores), which will suck out the moist. Leave it to dry and turn if need be.
I left mine to dry overnight and there was no need to turn, there will be if you leave it out in the sun.

Once it's dried to a consistency you are happy to work with kneed it and store it air tight.

Le Veauthibault 2010 - Paper Kiln

Today I want to share some more memories of my trip to France with you. 

The last full day we made a paper kiln and it was a lot of fun. 

Most of us had prepared a little bowl in the days before so they were dry when Friday came.  

We used a grill form an old BBQ as a base. We made a channel underneath to be able to add wood and fuel the fire. On top we constructed a basket in metal wire to hold the ceramics. 

We filled the basket with charcoal and the dry clay pieces.

We stacked wood we had collected on our walks around the basket.

We wrapped the wood with cardboard, leaving a hole for a chimney in the top.

Than followed 7 layers of clay slush and newspapers, one layer slush, one layer newspaper and so on.

The finished paper kiln with a cute chimney and holes either side to light the fire and add more wood.

What to do with the left over slush.....slush fight!

Watching the kiln shrink as the fire burns higher and higher,
we kept adding wood until is was well alight on all sides.

Well into the night we removed the paper surround,
the wood had burned away and all the charcoal is glowing.
This is good, we need much heat for long around the pieces.

In the morning we found it like this. Perfect result, only 2 bowls were broken,
most likely because there was air trapped in the clay.

These are the ones I made, I had added stripes in copper-oxide and a glaze.
For the glaze it had not been hot enough so that came off or 
it was because the glaze was too old and past it's sell-by-date.

Well hope you enjoyed our fun day too and maybe it will inspire you to make your own paper kiln.

How to make a display for rings

Being a big fan of rings, usually big rings too, it had to happen; I found nice adjustable rings blacks and started making rings in porcelain and clay. Now I had to find a good way to display these on a fair. I know you can buy displays or just stick them in a piece of foam rubber, but that's not so nice. This idea struck me when I was just back from the DIY store, so had to go back again......cause I wanted to use the tubes that are meant for the insulation of water pipes. 

So get some of those tubes, I got the smallest size, get some fabric and a frame, IKEA is great for this. Get enough tubes to fill the frame.

Take the frame apart, you only need the actual frame.

Cut the pipes to length, just a few millimeters longer than the opening of the back of the frame. And open each of them. Cut the fabric, so there is enough to go around the tube and than add about 3-4 cm (1,5 inches) to that. 

This way you have enough fabric to go back into the tube.

Do this for all tubes and fill the frame. 

Turn it around and fill with rings and your display is ready.

Cuttle Fish casting

I did some cuttle fish casting earlier and I'd like to share the process with you. I really like the natural pattern and the material. AND > It is a great way to use up your scrap silver.

How do you make a silver cuttle fish casting? You start by going to a pet shop and buy at least 2 cuttle fish bones. You need some sandpaper a flat surface, files, masking tape and lots of heat.

Sand the cuttle fish bones until they are flat and fit together perfect. Than with a file make the shape in one of the bones you want to cast, here just a plain rectangle. With a cutter make a gutter around the chosen shape. This is to let the air out when the silver goes in. Also make a V-shape in BOTH bones to poor the silver in later, about 4 cm or 1,25 inches in size. 

Brush the bones to get more detail in the wavy pattern. 

Make extra tiny vents from the chosen shape to the gutter/air vent.

Sprinkle both sides with a pinch of BORAX powder. 

Tape (masking tape works fine) the 2 sides together, make sure there are no other holes than the V-shape. (Hold it against the light to check) Than set it up, ready for casting. 

Melt enough silver for the cast, better too much than too little :-) Here a small kiln is used and a torch to speed up the melting, but you can use just a torch by itself as well. 

Keep heating the now liquid silver while you bring it to the mold. 

Poor the silver in the cuttle fish cast. Once all silver is in, put the cast in a bowl (make sure it is heat resistant) of water and best take outside, cause the smell of burning cuttle fish is not the nicest. Once cooled take cast from cuttle fish.

This is the cast, cut in half and the left side has been rolled. This is an option if you want to make your cast a bit bigger by rolling it, it will flatten the pattern a bit, as you can see. If you flatten it altogether, you will have a fresh sheet of silver. 

These are the results of an earlier casting which I did.