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DIY Clay Bowls with Air-Drying Clay, Do’s and Don’ts

Hello! How are you holding up, wherever you are? Splendid I hope? As for me, I am huffing and puffing and struggling to write a few words from this sun-baked apartment about these DIY Stamped Clay Bowls that I made- or according to Wendy, “whipped up”- recently 🙂 But boy-oh-boy, I am having to squeeze in quite a few rounds of bath, cold water press, airconditioning on 23 and ice water in between. While I see happy spring pictures on facebook- and thanks to some of you shovelling snow near the drive- let me tell you that in this side of the hemisphere Bombay is baking at 300 degree centigrade. For once I am empathizing with grilled veggies.

Clay bowl 3

But again, thanks to the extreme heat that my bougainvillea is in full bloom! Yay-ish! At any point of time you will find some stray flowers in my home, had mishtuk {the rabbit} not eaten it already. All my life I chased roses when bougainvillea was right there waiting for me to understand how beautiful, how low-maintenance and how perfect for our weather they are.

{digression alert}

So, anyway, before I fly away on ‘stream of consciousness’ wings, I’ll get to the clay bowls. {It’s a good thing that I can now understand when I am steering off topic}

clay bowl 6
{Sneaking in some limewater in the middle of shoot…and yes the table is dirty from extreme clay working so what}

So coming back, this Sunday, when I just could not sleep and the house was like an oven, and there were friends talking movies and politics- I went out to get some fresh air. I meant to just go and take a stroll but ended up going to Hobby Ideas and get home some air drying clay and two very cute wooden blocks.

I do these things- impulsive craft shopping! But how could I not? I have been looking for these blocks for ages. I simply couldn’t resist buying when I found them for little over a dullah each. And ofcourse, clay is just clay. You don;t need to justify why you’d get home clay. So there 😉

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You see, the idea was to do some block printing on cotton and make clay bowls but the experimental kitty kat in me ended up stamping on clay instead. I stamped one bowl {just out of curiosity} to see how it looked and it looked quite dandy. It mimicked the look of expensive pottery, quite effortlessly and I loved how it looked.

So here it is, an easy tutorial for how to make stamped clay bowls which looks like expensive pottery. It’s so easy, you’d think I whipped it up out of nowhere 😉

P.S: Adding some do’s and don’ts too, because when you DIY you need to know the odds.

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What you’ll need to make clay bowls with air drying clay

Air drying clay- white/terracotta/grey whichever you prefer

A rolling mat and a rolling pin

Bowls of different sized, ideally plastic

Exacto knife

Acrylic Paint

Stamps

lacquer

Wooden blocks or stamps

Sand paper: 1200 grit

How to make clay bowls with air drying clay & stamping

Take your air dry clay and knead until soft. Roll your clay out to about 5mm thick. If its too thin, it will break after drying.

Take your stamp/wooden block and press firmly onto the clay. Repeat until you have covered the clay with your stamped design. Do not press it too hard as it would make it difficult for you to lift the clay. It might puncture the clay too

Take your bowl and place it upside down on your clay, over the stamped area. With exacto knife cut around the edge of the bowl.

Peel remaining clay.

Next, lift your clay and place it inside the bowl. Use your thumbs to press the clay down. Be light handed.

Dry them overnight. If you do not show this bit of patience, you will run the risk of having clay bowls that break easily. 

Next, turn your bowl upside down and tap the sides. Because I used plastic bowl I could stretch the bowl a bit to help it release the clay bowl. It comes out easily. Hence, use plastic bowl

Once your clay bowl is out, sand the edges.

Use acrylic paint to colour them. You should dry the colored bowl for atleast 12 hours before spraying the laquer. 

TIP: If you want glazed pottery look, thin out your colour with a bit of water, pour the color in directly in the clay bowl, swirl around and discard the excess liquid. This will help the colors to sit in the crevices and less on the flat surfaces. Dry and lacquer. 

Give it a day and you’ll have pretty bowls in your home, made under 300 bucks (5$ for you lucky guys) to style with and flaunt.

Clay Bowl 2

Let me know what you think!

Signing out for today and linking here:

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