Tea Light Luminaries

1. Luminary Intro: It's winter L. Paco's goats and chickens. They're all hanging out in the barn. They don't want to be outside me either. Right now I'm all about sweat pants, cozy fires, Poppy, cuddles. You know what else I really like in the winter Candles? So let's make some luminaries. You go Holiday themed Winter Solstice. Anything you want. Really? We can keep it simple for the beginners or get really complex. For those of you want to go all in. Either way, these luminaries air gonna warm up your winter here Some of my students, luminaries all it up. I love the way that cast shadows and reflected light a little warm from in the darkness. Hope you keep cozy, Enjoy. 2. Luminary 1: Slabs and Templates: first, we're gonna roll out our slab. A lot of people like to use paint sticks is a guy so they don't end up with uneven slabs. Either way, you want to make sure that you're flipping this lab and rotating it so that it doesn't stick to the table. And then you get more of a square shape than one long, skinny piece. Once pockets to what just moved to another notice that I'm not rolling my slab on for my car, something that it would stick to. I've got untreated. Would you don't have a table like that. Just go buy a piece of hardware. Go by Visa plywood from the hardware store. Now I've gotta let my slab dry out of it. If it's too soft, it's gonna act like a little lasagna noodle. It's not gonna want to hold its shape. I needed to be just right soft enough that I can. It's a little bit flexible. I can bend it. It'll hold it shapes, but not so dry that when I try to bend it, it snaps. You can see this lab is so dry that it's starting to change color. When I try to bend it, it just cracks. So while you're waiting for your slaps to dry out, you could work on your paper template. One of the things I love about this project is that it taps into the time When I was a kid , I learned a pulled a piece paper in half, drawn it, cut it, unfold it, and suddenly magically, you had a perfectly symmetrical image. Children have very few inhibitions about making art, so it's kind of fun to return to that space. I'm gonna make two different luminaries for you one super simple and the other a little more complex so that you can choose the level that you're comfortable with when this example, I folded the paper three times and then we're gonna cut it, just like I used to do as a kid when making paper snowflakes. It doesn't take a lot of time to make these cuts. And paper and paper obviously is a lot more affordable than clay. So I highly recommend that you make several templates until you get one that you're really happy with 3. Luminary 2: Trace and Cut: my tree luminary is the really simple version. So I'm not even thinking about the interior cut cuts yet because I know I'm gonna keep them really easy and noticed that my template has all straight edges and that makes it so much easier to cut out that anything rounded since my snowflake template is more complicated. Instead of directly cutting around the paper, I'm gonna use the needle till to trace it out first. Then I can get the paper out of my way. When I go to do the cutting, - I'm gonna go ahead and cut the interior shapes out now. But I'm not actually gonna pop him out of the clay. If I were to do that this soon, it would be really fragile when I goto forming into the upright luminary. In fact, if you wanna wait to make those cuts until after your luminary is assembled, that's valid to at that point, the clay will be drier, more sturdy and not so vulnerable. Now we're getting to the fun part where we're able to take a two dimensional flat image, pop it up, put a little bend in it and it suddenly becomes three dimensional 4. Luminary 3: Shape to Form: I'm gonna show you two different approaches to getting your clay to stand upright for the tree. I'm gonna put a fold in the mental, so I marked the center. Then I'm gonna angle cut so that I can remove that middle beat of clay essentially scoring the clay. If I don't score and create that seem, then want to go to fold the clay? It can be kind of wonky, curvy. You're basically telling the clay where you want it to hold. Now it's time to attach the upright part of the luminary to a base rather than try and measure and figure out exactly what kind of triangle I want for the base. I'm gonna slip in, score my luminary directly to a piece of slab. It's too big. Then I'll be able to cut to fit. There are lots of different approaches to slipping in scoring. I like my slipped to be a little bit running or than most people will score my clay, add the slip and then I score again in the opposite direction so that I'm really sure all those clay molecules are kind of reaching out and wanting to grab hold of each other. Let's zoom in here. I want you to notice that when I trim that base, I'm gonna leave about a centimeter of extra clay so that I have a little bit of material to to blend from one slab to the other. This technique is called sewing. It's important to Dio. So you're really positive that that seem isn't gonna when it dries, that it's not going to kind of pull away from each other and cracked, Don't forget to blend the edges right on the corner, those air generally the most vulnerable spots and then in the inside instead of sowing. I'm just gonna kind of seal that scene. I like to call it Ziploc Method. Now it's time to figure out what I want the back of my base to look like. I always draw first so that I'm confident where I'm going. When I pick up the knife for my snowflake, I will know that I want a perfectly circular base, so I'm gonna find something that I can trace out. One of the reasons I sometimes work on top of a piece of paper is then I can easily spin the slab, which I find a lot easier than trying to rotate by night. Here we go again. Gotta slipping. Score. You can see that my slab is exactly at the right moisture level. Hard enough. Dry enough that I can put a bend in it and it will hold that shape, but soft enough that it won't crack when I go to bend it. 5. Luminary 4: Interior Cuts: My tree luminary is the really simple version. So I'm not even thinking about the Interior Cuts, Cuts yet because I know I'm gonna keep them really easy. And notice that my template has all straight edges and that makes it so much easier to cut out that anything rounded. Since my snowflake template is more complicated, instead of directly cutting around the paper, I'm going to use the needle tool to trace it out. First. I can get the paper out of my way. I want to go to do the cutting. I'm gonna go ahead and Cut the interior shapes out now, but I'm not actually going to pop them out of the clay. If I were to do that, the sun, it would be really fragile when I go to Form it into the upright luminary. In fact, if you want to wait to make those cuts until after your luminary is assembled. That's valid too. At that point, the clay will be dryer, more sturdy, and not so vulnerable. Now we're getting to that FUN part where we're able to take a two-dimensional flat image, pop it up, put a little bend in it, and it suddenly becomes three-dimensional. 6. Luminary 5: Refine and Polish: At this stage, the clay is leather hard, so if I put too much print pressure on it, I'm gonna snap or crack the clay. So any little adjustments I make there are more like shaving the edges than making severe cuts. All run my felling knife at an angle on all those edges to make sure they're nice and soft and don't look like they've been hacked into. And then, finally, I can add a little bit of water and use a brush to get into those hard to reach spots and make sure they're all nice and smooth. I would never add water to a piece that was really soft already. But again, we're at leather hard stage, so the click and take in the water without wanting to fall over or become slip. This is the fussy part that requires a lot of patients. Try to remember once it's been fired, you can't blend wet down smooth. This is your last chance 7. Luminary 6: Fire and Illuminate: for this video. I've already fired and glazed my luminary. You don't know how to glaze. I have another video called Lou Fire glazing here. Some of my students luminaries all it up. I love the way that cast shadows and reflected light. Little warm from in the darkness. I hope you keep cozy. Enjoy.