Something I have to make for the convention, I ended up doing my usual thing:
I could have spend $20 and just bought one...
Instead, I'm making it.
Here's the initial stage of just one component.
This is porcelain slip. Essentially, it's a jug of super watered-down porcelain. You have to stir it like crazy since all the sediment settles at the bottom, then you pour some into a separate jar/cup/etc, add liquid glycerine to make it malleable (otherwise it crumbles when it dries), and pour it onto bats to dry. I mixed enough to fill one (I think it's about 1/4" thick), and had a little leftover.
Can you see how reflective shiny it is?
When the slip turns matte on the surface (it dries from the outsides in), you can cut it with a knife, or in my case, I used maple leaf cookie-cutters. The smallest sized one is about 1.25" wide, the next size up about 1.5", the largest size is about 6" wide.
Note that I laid them down so most of them aren't flat...
And here they are after they dried enough that I could start punching holes in them, but not dry enough that they would crack/break. It's a very fine line between dry enough, and too dry.
Going to fire them tomorrow and see how they turn out. I expect they'll shrink in size by about 25%
