Making coloured slips for clay

 Today I spent most of the day making loads of coloured slips, for my Sgraffito work.

I had 7 different coloured stains, which I bought from Bath Potters.

I bought…

Azure / Black / Emerald / Coral / Violet / Honey / Sepia.

The first thing to do was to get my equipment together.  I needed a clean bucket, water jug, 120 gauge sieve, a bowl and a stick mixer.   You can use a wooden spoon but it’s a bit quicker with a mixer.

 

I weighed out 200g of ball clay powder, 200g of china clay powder, 20g of stain and roughly a litre of water.

I put all the powders (whilst wearing a mask of course) and the water into a large clean bucket.

Then I blitzed it with my stick blender until it was nice and smooth.

Once that was done it was time to run the coloured slip through a 120 gauge sieve, and into a clean bowl, to make sure there was absolutely no lumps left.

Lovely and smooth.  Ready for painting onto leather hard clay.

I then poured it into a lidded container and labelled it.   As slips can look a bit different to the powder colour once mixed.

Then I had to thoroughly clean every piece of equipment properly so not to cross contaminate the next mix.

Can’t wait to try these out now.