Slip Trailing with Clay

Video Transcript

"So, now that I've got my slip prepared I'm ready to go ahead and complete this piece of the project. I'm going to lay my template back over where I rolled my leaves. And, using a needle tool I'm just going to cut right through to cut this piece out. Then, I'll remove my template. Now, the leaves are there. But, in order to get the detail that I'm going to want to get later on with the glaze and also to accentuate the edges of the leaf I like to slip trail just around the edge of the leaf. So, the slip that I've prepared I just put in this mustard bottle and I'm just squeezing it right out following the outline of the leaf itself. And, you do want it to stick up rather high. The slip is a lot more moist than the clay that you're attaching it to. So, it is going to shrink significantly. It's not going to stick up as much as it starts out. So, in order to be able to see it later on you need it to be pretty big right now. And, when you do it this way sometimes the slip will crack a little bit away from itself as it dries. Which, to me is not a problem. It doesn't bother me aesthetically. It stays stuck to the slab itself and that's what's important to me. But, if you want to eliminate that you can take a scouring tool and scour around the edges before you attack the slip to it. And, if you do that it's going to dry more evenly and probably not have little splits in it."