Create one piece of a ceramic garden tower that can be repeated in many sizes and colors. These techniques can be used to sculpt different things for your home or garden. With a little experience you can make almost anything with clay.

My class outline

Part 1: Outline Your Class Overview

Class Title:

Be specific Keep your title to 30 -70 characters

Incorporate keywords relevant to your class

Topic, skills, techniques, tools, project, takeaways

Use proper capitalization

Ceramic Garden Tower:

Handbuild a hollow ceramic ball from clay slabs to create a beautiful piece of art for your garden.

Class Description: Write a brief overview of your class, which will be included in written form under your class videos.

What is the class about?

What skills will students learn?

Who is the class for?

Is any prior knowledge or experience required?

Why is the class useful?

How can the skills learned be applied in different scenarios?

Materials / Resources

What software or equipment is required?

In this class I will teach you how to make a hollow ceramic ball that can be repeated in many different sizes and colors. There are different ways to decorate the ball. When you have completed a few of these, stack them up on a pipe for art in your garden.

If you have played with clay before you will have no problem learning these skills but I believe you don’t need a lot of experience to do this. Perfection is not required.

Once you have learned these skills you can apply them to many different ceramic arts. Pottery, animal sculptures, wall art. The options are endless.

Materials:

A kiln or a friend with a kiln, there are businesses who will fire for you as well.

Clay

Two wooden dowels

A wooden rolling pin

Tools for scoring, carving and cutting

A bowl the size you want your ball to be.

An old T-shirt you can cut up

Large bowl of water

A sponge for smoothing and cleaning

Something to press into the clay, if you want.

Glaze of your choice. Make sure the firing range matches the clay. You can not mix and match

A large piece of canvas to roll the clay out on. I use Duck cloth from the fabric store.

A large, soft paint brush.

Project Description:

All Skillshare classes include a class project that prompts students to put their new skills into practice. Come up with an exercise or assignment that students can easily complete. Learn more about crafting a class project here.

Start with a concise sentence that summarizes the entire project. Follow with a few lines or a brief paragraph explaining the details of the project in more depth. You may also share a step-by-step list of instructions.

Wrap up the class project description by describing exactly what the finished project will look like and what format it should be in. Encourage students to share their project in the class project gallery.

We recommend:

Encouraging students to complete their project as they go through the class

Making your project easy to start — students will feel less intimidated and will be more likely to complete the project.

Asking students to share works-in-progress with the class community to foster collaboration between students.

Brainstorming prompts: What are 3-4 ways someone can demonstrate that they learned this skill? What will students be excited about? What will provide the highest sense of accomplishment? How can your project appeal to a wider range of people?

In this class you will learn how to create a ceramic ball that can be repeated in many sizes and colors and is one piece of a garden tower. A garden tower is a number of ceramic pieces stacked onto a pipe in the garden. Make any shape, animal or face and it can be as tall as you wish with as many pieces as you can make.

You will make the ball, let it dry, fire to bisque, apply the glaze and fire again.

When you’re finished you will have an interesting ceramic piece that will add interest and texture to your garden and bring so much joy for years to come.

Don’t forget to share your progress with the rest of us. We all love to see others creativity and please encourage each other.