While we were there the owner, Maia Desfosses-Yang, taught us how to make clay stamps. If you these look fun and easy, be sure to contact Maia to sign up for one of her summer clay classes. Her schdueld is up on her website.
I was so impressed with her studio size. She can easily accommodate a number of children and everything was so nicely set up. I was immediately envious of her clay wheel and was nostalgic for the one I owned years ago.
Maia start me off with a small ball of clay, no bigger then a walnut. She then showed me how to pinch a top with my fingers and make the edges smooth by rolling it around the table. In the photo below you can see my original ball and then the stamp shapes in the upper right corner that she formed.
Since the stamps are small and there isn't much room to leave your name, Maia suggested using these pasta alphabet letters embedded into the clay.
These burn off in the kiln and yet leave an impressions. Genius!
Another great idea that Maia had was to wrap the area you want to carve in plastic wrap.
This way when you carve into your clay, the carving tool won't leave a huge indentation at the end of your line. This is very helpful with children who sometimes don't know their own strength with carving clay and can accidently carve to the other side.
I carved a little stamp with my business logo that you can see at the start of this post. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Be sure to check out the studio for class information and to learn other fun, easy ways to play with clay.
Check out Maia's Etsy shop for her fun creations!
No comments:
Post a Comment