Decorating Pottery with Underglaze: Sponge Stamping | Vicki Conley | Skillshare
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Decorating Pottery with Underglaze: Sponge Stamping

teacher avatar Vicki Conley, Art and Design

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      0:53

    • 2.

      Supplies for Decorating Pottery

      1:16

    • 3.

      Spray Booth (1)

      1:28

    • 4.

      Making the Sponge Stamps

      4:49

    • 5.

      Spraying the Background

      2:09

    • 6.

      Sponge Stamping the Birds

      2:04

    • 7.

      Painting the Details

      2:34

    • 8.

      Project

      0:43

    • 9.

      Wrap up

      0:20

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About This Class

In this class I will share my signature style of pottery with a sponge stamped hummingbird design.

I will teach you how I make unique sponge stamps cut from soft foam and use underglaze to make designs that are truly unique.

I will also tell you how I make a homemade spray booth for safe application of the under glaze.

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Meet Your Teacher

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Vicki Conley

Art and Design

Teacher

Hello, I'm Vicki Conley.

I have been a professional studio potter for over 40 years and own Pinon Pottery Gallery in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. I am known for my very unique hummingbird functional pottery. I am also a fiber artist and have been making art quilts since 2007.

 I enter many juried shows and know what it takes to get good photos of art work. Please join me as I teach you easy pottery techniques and how to take photos of your art quilts in your own studio.

Please visit me at http://www.vicki-conley.com/

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Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hi, Welcome back to pinion pottery. In today's class, I'm going to show you how I do this sponge stamp, hummingbird design. These are put on with some sponge stamps that I designed myself using under glaze. And I first spray under glaze on the top of the piece to give a little accent. It's high fired with a clear glaze. To finish it off. You could design your stamps in a pattern that you'd like. I've also done stamps as red chilies and a fish pattern. So be creative and follow along in these lessons to see how to make these stamps. 2. Supplies for Decorating Pottery: The supplies that you're going to need for this class are pretty simple. You just need a pattern, isn't scissors to cut your pattern out of whatever kind of sponge you're gonna make. This is some one inch thick soft foam. You can buy this at Joanne's or a craft store. Sharpie marker to draw your shape on the sponge. And then you need a wood-burning tool. You want to be very careful with this and you either need to use it in a spray booth. I, and I've talked about my spray booth in another lesson that I build it out of a box fan in a window. But you could also do all of this cutting outdoors if you don't have a spray booth, do it outdoors because it really smells when you melt the foam with your cutting tool. To do the stamping on the green where you'll need to make up your recipe for your undergrad glaze and choose the Mason stain additives that you want to put in for your colorants. You can paint that under glaze on or you can use a sprayer. I use a patch six number 62 sprayer. And I'll put the name of that on the page with the under glaze recipe. I hope to see some really cool designs that you've thought about making with some sponge stamps. 3. Spray Booth (1): This is a picture of my spray booth that we made out of plywood. When I first started out spraying, I used to giant cardboard box with a box fan and a furnace filter propped up by window. But the box, the cardboard box eventually gets sloppy. So I made this boost a long time ago and it's about the outsides, about 24 inches by 25 inches by 37 inches deep. And then it holds a 20 by 20, I think, farness filter in the back, which you can see on this one is already getting dirty and gummed up. So I do my sprain in there for the accent color on my hummingbird design. I also use it for my waxing booth. You can see the electric skillet in there where I melt the wax and also that smell out the window. So basically I just opened the window, turn on the box fan, turn on the air compressor, and spray my hummingbird background accent spray tool that I use is a posh model 62 little small airbrushed glaze Breyer, it comes with this little bottle like this. And I put the under glazing the bottle, have to water it down a little bit and don't use it as Nick for the sprain as I do for painting on designs. And then I spray on the background, which I'll show you in a few minutes. 4. Making the Sponge Stamps: Now for cutting out my sponge, like I said in the supplies, this is one-inch soft foam sponge. I drew a little design hummingbird shape, cut it out of the paper. I'm going to put it on the foam. Kind of like cookie cutters. You don't want to waste any. I'm going to trace around it with a Sharpie marker. These do not have the kind of detail then that the ones that people cut with a laser cutter. So you might look in your area and see if you find somebody that can cut some with a laser cutter. But this is how I cut them for probably 20 years. I draw the basic shape and then I make some more marks on here. I think I'm going to put the use the wood burner to make some spaces in the Sunday to give it a little bit of definition. And when you use the wood burner, you want to make the cuts fairly deep. That there's definition between those shapes. And then I usually put a few cuts in, in the tail. And those can be adjusted as you're cutting with the wood-burning tool. Then I just take the scissors. I rough cut the bird. This like I said, this really is a rough cut and try to cut on the lines. But you can always smooth it up a little bit too with the wood burner, but you can make a pretty smooth cut there. These last quite a long time. Eventually you have to make them again. They do wear out eventually. Sometimes depending on how good a job I do, the rough cut, I can make the decoration on both sides with the wood-burning tool because this is fairly thick foam. And then I can have my bird or fish or whatever go either direction when I stamp it onto the pottery. Now some of this can be evened up with the wood-burning tool and that of course, needs to be done outside or in a spray booth with fans sucking out the window, which makes lots of noise. But I'll show you that next. Now that we have cut the sponge out of the large sponge and we've got some marks on it where we want to make the cuts with the wood-burning tool. I'm going to do that in just a second. But you have to have do this outdoors or have a fan in the window, like I have my little spray booth here that I demonstrated in another lesson. Just a homemade box with a box fan in a furnace filter will help to set the smell out. Right now I'm gonna turn this day and on. It will make lots of noise. But I'll mute that out later. And you can see how I am going to cut all of this little hummingbird. Okay? 5. Spraying the Background: Okay, Now that you have made your pottery and it's all nice and dry, That's called green where? Now I'm going to show you in this lesson how I do my sponge stamped hummingbird decoration. And we've already talked about how you're going to make your little sponge stamps of any kind of design that you want. And now we're gonna get set up to do the background spray that I use, the under glaze for. Now. I make my own under glaze that I spray on and I also paint the sponges to decorate with. But you can always buy under glaze as well. But I'll put the recipe for my under glaze that I use on my white cone ten stone where I'll put that recipe in the project resource area. You can see here that I have a lot of green where laid out on this counter. I will spray the under glaze excellent along the top of almost all these pieces. And it'll do all the spraying first. And then I'll decorate with the hummingbird sponge stamps. Makes a lot of noise with the fan going in the air compressor going. Probably mute that and show you a little bit of how I spray the top of these pieces. 6. Sponge Stamping the Birds: Okay. Now I'm done with all the spraying of the under glaze for my background. And it's time to work on stamping the hummingbirds on. We already talked about it in another lesson. How I cut the hummingbird stamps out of foam and how now I'm having someone with the actual laser cutter cut them to get a little bit more exact design. I use my same under glazes that I did the spraying with. And I'm going to put the all three colors on the bird. With just a little paint brush. I can usually get about five sponge stamps out of each time I painted. I've got a little red for the underneath his neck, some green and some blue. I put all three colors on the stamp carefully. Just takes a light touch. Like sponge painting when you were a kid. Dampened the sponge, the hummingbird sponge just a little bit with water when I started and it will get wetter and wetter than more. Under glaze, you paint on it. Whenever you're stamping it on, you can tell pretty much when it's out of out of under glaze and you need to put some more on. Let's put some on the mug here. After I get all of them stamped on with the bird, go back with the fine tip paintbrush and put the black in the wings and add the detail. And the black detail will really make it stand out. 7. Painting the Details: Now, using a very fine liner brush, I'm going to use the same black under glaze. Hand paint. Little feathers and the beak on each bird. You'll notice how just the addition of the black really intensifies the design. Finishes it off. After all of these hummingbirds are painted, then all of this pottery can be loaded into the kiln for the first Bisk firing. In later, it's glazed with a clear glaze. Hi-fi or to cone tin stone where it's very fragile in this green where state, you have to be really careful in handling it while you paint your bird. Now I'm painting the black. I paint the beak and the wings, or the feathers in the wings on each bird. You'll notice that it just makes the little bird, all of a sudden look finished, jump out to have that contrast of the solid black. Now once again, the blue spray, the sponge to stamp birds. This is all done on the green where it's very fragile. You gotta handle it really carefully. Then I'm gonna put it in the Bisk kiln, this GET. And then it will come out and be glazed with a clear glaze and go into the high fire cone tin kiln. 8. Project : Before I was ever doing the hummingbird pottery, was making this fish design pottery. These are some pieces from my kitchen from back in the day when I did the fish. Once I started doing the hummingbird, it was clear that where I live, the Hummingbird would be more popular with the customers. Your project assignment for this class would be to get some foam, some scissors and a wood-burning tool, and make your own stamps in some kind of design and practice with under glazes, stamping onto some of your pottery. 9. Wrap up: Thanks for watching my class on how I make my sponge stamp designs. I hope you'll watch some of my other classes on hand building pottery and my next class, that's going to be about all my best selling items from my 40 year career as a studio potter.