Put a bird on it - adventures in making custom texture mats for clay

Die-cut Bird Pieces, used for creating a clay texture mat.

One technique that I have been using for a few years is to incorporate textured areas into thrown items, or into slab work (mainly buttons). I have recently started experimenting with different ways to add texture without using commercial rubber stamps, including designing and having my own custom rubber stamps produced, but that is a whole other adventure that I will share later.

These laser cut wood piece caught my eye recently. Truthfully, I am a sucker for anything laser cut in general because of the precision and detail that show and had slowly amassed a collection of small laser cut wood pieces, with the idea of impressing them into clay and finally got around to doing it.

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Craft foam sheets are a staple in my studio, mostly to roll our slabs, to minimize the canvas pattern from the table.  I had read a tutorial about using craft foam to create textured mats on Chandra Debuse's blog here, which reminded me how useful those foam mats are. So, out came the trusty glue gun (which doesn't melt the foam, fyi) and those birds quickly turned into a nice textured mat.  The beauty of this too, is that you can customize it to whatever size and shape that you need.

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So far this mat has been used approximately 10 times and is still as sturdy as it was with the first use.  The one challenge is pulling it off of the clay slowly, and as straight up (rather than at an angle) as possible.  Because the die cut wood pieces are so precise, pulling it up at a angle can distort the individual impressions slightly. Here is an example of the texture on the lid of a french butter dish.

If you try making your own, I would love to see your results.

Enjoy!

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