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Friday, February 14, 2014

Slip Slidin' Away


Slip sliding away, slip sliding away 
You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away


Hi, there!! Carole from Create & Craft with a tip for working with clay. In many of my projects I use slip. Slip is a "liquefied suspension of clay particles in water." Fancy way of saying watered down clay. You can learn how to make your own slip from Diane's blog post. Slip is like good wine—it improves with age. As it gets older, it gets smoother and creamier. I add a drop or two of chlorine bleach to my slip to retard mold growth. Yes, I keep it that long.

To me, slip is like magic—it covers a multitude of sins. I'm not a big fan of sanding. So, I've discovered that adding a coating of slip to a dried piece, and letting it dry again reduces, and in some cases eliminates, the sanding required. It can also produce a great vintage aged texture. For this technique, the slip I use is the consistency melted chocolate.

I used this technique for the piece that I'll feature in my next blog post. Here's a sneak peek. 

4 comments:

  1. My mother used to have tons (literally tons) of ceramic molds and I can remember playing with the greenware and using slip to attach handles for teacups or vases; sometimes even things like broken off arms from figures. Ahh the memories!

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  2. Yes it is a main staple here at the MacNaughtan studio..lol

    I wondered about adding bleach, but never tried it. I will give it a try. Great tip, thank you Carole :)

    ~Diane

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  4. Slip ... you gotta have it! Wonderful Tip! LeeAnn

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