Ceramic Clay Work Surface

The brightly colored flat craft foam that has become so popular for children s toys puzzles and crafts makes a wonderful work surface for handbuilding.

Ceramic clay work surface.

You can make window clings by drizzling liquid polymer clay onto a ceramic tile and baking it directly on the tile. A ceramic is any of the various hard brittle heat resistant and corrosion resistant materials made by shaping and then firing a nonmetallic mineral such as clay at a high temperature. Clay will stick to or leave vast smears on most surfaces. Other possibilities are concrete granite masonite concrete board and hardibacker board.

Every potter needs a surface to wedge clay on and there are many different types. For this reason it is best to work on a piece of sturdy canvas such as a mid to heavyweight cotton duck. Common examples are earthenware porcelain and brick. The closed cell foam is about 1 8 inch thick and doesn t leave a texture on clay so the larger sheets are great for rolling small slabs on a slab roller.

Though it is possible to work from a taped down sheet of wax paper or plastic wrap if you plan to work with polymer clay extensively you ll probably want to find a more permanent work surface. The simplest wedging surface is a piece of canvas. The crystallinity of ceramic materials ranges from highly oriented to semi crystalline vitrified and often completely amorphous e g glasses. A ceramic tile not an acrylic tile is a common choice for this purpose.

It can also be impossible to separate a newly formed clay object from the surface it was formed on.