View Larger Image Tips and techniques in our weekly series "Great Ideas for Potters" come from all levels of experience: studio artists, production potters, students, teachers and industry experts.

September 7, 2007

Tip of the Week: Let the Music Move You!

by Ceramic Arts Daily | Read Comments (3)

Each week, we provide you with a selection of helpful hints and ideas drawn from suggestions submitted by Ceramic Arts Daily subscribers and Ceramics Monthly readers. Some are quite serious (especially those directed toward health and safety precautions), while others are more lighthearted. You'll find ideas for forming processes, decorating, glazing and firing, along with tips for outfitting your studio and creating and using tools.

Tip of the Week, submitted by Ceci Lindo
I like to listen to music in the studio while I work; however, clay dust will get into and ruin a CD player. So, I saved a plastic zip bag, the kind that comes with blankets, sheet sets or comforters, and placed my CD player inside it. Poking small holes or slits in the bag allows the wires for the speakers to pop out the back. Then I just load the player with my favorite CD, zip the bag close, and voila! no more ruined CD players. Thanks, Ceci!

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Other helpful tips

• From your local floor-covering store or a new-home-construction site, get a piece of waste/excess vinyl flooring and cut to the same size or longer as the canvas you use with your slab roller. By placing the vinyl at the bottom of the canvas/clay/canvas sandwich, you have support for moving large slabs.
  
• If you throw directly on the wheel head, try running water under the bottom of your pot with a cutoff wire, then gently slide the pot onto a board covered with wax paper. The pot should move freely. Later, the paper can be peeled off the bottom. This method prevents the marks and distortion that often accompany the use of lifters or fingers to lift a pot off the wheel. Also, you can avoid having to run the cutoff wire under the pot again to remove it from a bat.
  
• For interesting patterns, try soaking cheesecloth or any other netlike material in glaze, applying it (flat or bunched) to bisqueware, then firing. The technique also works well to develop light texturing with slips.
  
• When applying colorants on bisqueware, try using a rubber eraser to remove unwanted splatters or mistakes; it will work much quicker and do a more thorough job than a wet sponge. Plus, the eraser can be shaved and sharpened to reach intricate areas.
  
• Use scraps of expanded polystyrene (sheets of insulation) as lightweight, portable work bases for handbuilding. Polystyrene can also be used to anchor pointed tools while working or for storage.
  
• To recycle scrap clay, line a bucket with a cloth bag. After filling it with dry scraps, add water. When the clay is soaked, remove the cloth bag and suspend it until the clay has dried to the required consistency. With a little experimentation of soaking and drying times, the clay comes out of the bag just right for wedging or pugging, eliminating the messy, liquid slip and plaster bat stage.