Trying a millefiori technique to make a slumped slab pot

Hey youtubers, what’s up? Today is Sunday afternoon and I was looking for a fun project to do this afternoon. And last night while hanging on youtube, I found these really cool videos by artist Curtis Benzle and he is doing some things on doing a millefiori technique and his pieces are gorgeous.

Okay, so we are going to try out my own version of that and see how it comes out today. I have eight pieces of purslane to make eight colors. So what I am going to do, I am going to start with the first purslane cube, put it in a container and then I have this blue mason stain. And we will start with the widest and go forward. So I am just going to measure out some stain and this is not real act at measurement, but it will help to the first mark. Put that in there and set that aside, put it the next one. And these cubes are about the same amount of clay, again they are not measure perfectly either. I am going to keep doing this using this little wine just help me measure. At this time, I am ready to go up two lines, put in at the stain, set that aside, and do the next one.

Okay, so I am on my last one, last piece of clay and this one would be the darkest that would have the most stain in it. So the next step I am going to do is I am going to mix the stain into the purslane so I can have the eight different shapes. Okay, so we are done mixing now. We have our pieces of clay from dark to light. The next thing we are going to do is take each piece and flatten them into pancakes.

Okay, so we have done that and we are going to just stock them on the top of each other again from dark to light. Okay, so I have no idea if this is going to work or not or we are going to give it a shot. We will put that back into the square shape. Okay, so let us figure out what to do next.

Okay, so I have this coil now and I have made it into a square because that is shape that I want, the individual pieces to be this one, same thing when I cut the ends off of it and then I am going to just cut this into a few different pieces just to make it easier to manage. This did not really come out exactly in gradation, but they will still make an interesting pattern even if they are not exactly gradated. And to me, I am fine with that especially being the very first time I have ever tried this.

Okay, so I am ready now to take these pieces and start cutting them into little pieces and working them together. So let us do that next.

Okay, so I have cut all these coils into little pieces now and I am going to start piecing them together to make a slob and I am just going to start putting those pieces next to each other. Paying attention to like here I have dark to dark and then light on the outside. So, I might if I wanted have the light to dark and I might turn that one in and put that one next too like that. So now, I have the dark all in and then light on the outside and I am not going to worry too much about the gaps in between because these are thick enough that when I roll them, I think those gaps will close.

Some of the squares came out checkered like this. I do not know if their cameras are going to pick that up, but came out kind of a checkered design. Some of them like coils which I cut from, came out like this with light to dark design and some of them for whatever reason came out like this with the dark inside and then the light, and then very mill and then the outside and I am sure the cameras are going to pick this up, but I can see little gradation of color. So that is pretty cool.

So, I have got of different design and things to work with and I am just going to start piecing this together, kind of a like quell or something. Just piecing them together and then when I have done that, I am going to roll them out with the roller pen to make the slob to do at the point whatever I want to with. And in this situation, I am going to use to make as a part of a slumped mode.

So all right. So the next step is to piece all the pieces together. Someone we will do that now. Okay, so we have color our pieces and lay them out and we are going to put our cloth on the top, put that down and gently use a roller. Try to roller that together and we do not want to press too hard because we do not want to lose our design, but at the same time if we do not press hard enough, the pieces would not stick together.

Okay, we have been rolling this for a while. So, okay very cool. So here is our slob now that we have connected those pieces and roll them together. I really like the pattern I am seeing right in here. You can see that was the dark to light little square so I connected together. So that mean, a real unique pattern that the same pattern is going to on up in here and these lab is pretty random because I just kind of put the pieces together. But I think you can easily see that if you are very careful with tag in place in the individual slices that you could make the patter into whatever you wanted to be. You could have to light to dark line. You can zigzag it or swirl stuff together and you can do lots of different things.

This is the first time I have ever tried this technique and so I am just planning with it. So maybe the next time I will do one of this, I will try to be a little one with pedicle and how I place the pattern and put them together the color, squares or clay and that kind of stuff. But for now, this is called—so now I have thin slob that I can use to make into something. And what I am going to do is I am going to slumped this over a rubber ball and throw a foot to catch too, to kind of make a free form vessel.

So the next step then would be to apply it to the ball. So we will do that now. Okay, so here we have rubber ball and we are just going to lay our slumped on top slob on top of the rubber ball to give the free form. Before I do that, I have to lose too much of the slob, but I would like to put it into a shape that does not quite so square. Okay, I will cut this into kind of arch here and here just to give it a little bit more of a rounded shape to kind of match the curve that would be—when put it on the ball. So I am going to turn it upside down and just gently take that off like that and that.

Okay, cool. So I am going to path that down. So we are going to lay that on the ball like that and you can see, “Wow, is not that cool the patterns there?” Okay, so I am just kind of rough them up, so I do not have that smooth or that straight edge from our cut. And I do want the ends to match somewhat. So since this and they extends out and this one is a little bit more even, I am just going to gently cut. Also, I want to make sure I do not cut through the rubber ball either, there we go. Pill that off and then same thing just kind of rough that up so does not appear so chop. I will let this dry a bit. We will remove from the ball, fire it, clear code it and see what it looks like. I will keep you up to date on that progress and so we will be looking for that from my future video.

All right, adios youtubers.