For my fifth project, I used How to Make an Air-Dry Clay Vase as my learning resource. I didn’t think my skills that I have learned so far would allow me to create a large vase like the one shown in link, so I decided to start small. I recently broke a glass ball that used to hold some dried flowers that I’ve saved over the years, and they are quite small, so win win!

First, I did the usual and rolled out a piece of clay. After the clay was rolled out, I cut out a rectangle-ish shape to cover my vase mold with. For a mold, I used a really small lunch box container for packing dipping sauce.

 

 

I then placed the container on my wax paper and used the rectangle piece to wrap the container to make the walls for my vase. I made my rectangle a little small, so I had to improvise and roll out a bit more clay to fully cover the sides of the container without the clay being too thin.

Removing the container from the center of the clay was not as daunting of a task that I was making it out to be, I just pushed down from the inside of the container and it slipped right out! I didn’t really want a circular shape like the one above, so I got out some slurry and tried to shape my clay into more of a vase shape. I then rolled out a bit more clay to make a bottom for it.

I roughly guessed with my etch marks the shape of the vase, added slurry to the etch marks and to the bottom of the vase and stuck the pieces together. I then used my sharpest tool to cut out the bottom of the vase from the rest of the clay.

Once my vase was free, I started shaping it with slurry and my fingers until I was happy with the results. To work on detail and add decoration, I used a toothpick to carve out some flower petals on the front. Once the clay started drying though the carve marks looked quite strange, so I quickly filled them with (you guessed it) slurry.