Decorating with Red Iron Oxide

Hey, YouTubers. What is up? Today, we are doing some things with reds, red iron oxide. I have a piece here that I have previously made and it has a saying in it. It says, you are the author of your own life story, and I have taken—this piece is already had been fired once and I have taken the piece and carved in the same, put red iron oxide on the lettering and fired at once. And now what I am doing is I am taking a mixture of red iron oxide, which is pretty much watered down and I am just kind of going over the piece like this, kind of running, run where it wants to, kind a drip and it makes kind of unique finish on the piece. You can see the brush strokes and I like that actually. Those of you that have worked with iron oxide know this stuff is messy, but I am just putting that on like this. And as you can see it is absorbing very quickly into the piece because it is the square, right now.

And then on the saying, I want that to show up. So, I am going to take just a spray bottle and top of the saying, I am going to just spray right there, okay, and then take a clean cloth. Rub that away. In that way it kind of light things up around where the words are so you can read the words better and I am going to let this dry early and then just put a coat of clear glaze on it and it will be cool.

This other piece I am working on, I actually had fired it. I fired it already and this one I just wrote on with a brush. It says, adopt the pace of nature her secret is patience and then same thing with the red iron oxide. I am just going to brush it on and I just love the way that it leaves kind of this patterns and marks from pointing it over with the brush. And it is fairly forgiving—I mean—you cannot wash it off a 100%, but if you do something that you do not want to do. You can watch if off or rub it. I am just going to right over those words and since they were under and have been fired under, they are on there permanently. And so, I am going to do the same thing that I did with the other and that is I am just going to use the squirt bottle and around the saying, I am going to get right up in there around the saying. I am just going to use that water to kind of clean back some of that oxide. Wipe some of it around there so we can see the lettering, okay.

Let us see what piece here. I put the red iron oxide thick on the bottom, turn it upside down, let it run down and then wipe away the part where it is getting in the way of the saying. So, I think you can see those, kind of run marks, and some of the interesting pattern that it leaves by doing that, kind of cool.

And what I am going to do is I could fire this and leave them raw because they are really decorative pieces. They are not intended for food use or anything, but I am probably going to dip in it to clear coat of glaze and then fire them just to make them shiny. So, I do not know if you can see the neat layering effects of red iron oxide gives on the piece, but it is pretty interesting and I like it. It is fun. So, experiment with some other red iron oxide. It is cheap and it is fun to play with. It is not very dangerous of a chemical, but it is messy so watch out.