Wax resist on Metal Clay

Well, I'm here at Linda's, experimenting with some of the products that I picked up at Amaco last week. I took a jar of "Wax Resist". It is normally used in their ceramics department. While I was in Chicago, one of the seminars was on watercolor etching on metal clay and they talked about using a variety of products as a resist.

Colleen and I have been using water on clay to smooth it out for the last 2 years. But to apply a resist, then apply water in the areas where there is no resist to achieve multiple layers....like a carving...well, how fun is that?

I stamped into a rectangle piece of clay. And in this piece, I saw a Star of David over on the right. It's really a starburst in the stamp...but I thought that perhaps I could apply resist to the starburst and get a Star of David out of it.

Amaco also has an entire line of clay modeling tools. Makes sense as they sell kilns. But I had never used them before. I especially liked the set of T Tools and the double-ended clay shapers are great.

I don't know if you can see the difference here, but I was able to etch quite deeply into the grooves by applying water with a brush and sponging it off. The areas where I painted the resist remained untouched by the water. It did not leech up under the resist either, so I'm quite happy with it so far. Of course, you allow the resist to dry completely before you start to etch with water.

The piece is now dry and I'm about ready to fire it. It's such a feeling when I experiment with a product for the first time. Will the resist burn off? Will the etching appear? How hot do I need to fire to get the resist to burn off? Will it burn into the clay and ruin the whole piece???

Stay tuned as it will be a couple hours before we pop it out of the kiln....I'll be posting the results tomorrow night along with a few other pieces we've been working on.

I have to say it's been delightful weatherwise here in Ozark MO. This afternoon, we did the first ever blog talk radio show for Friendly Plastic. Great fun!!! Tomorrow we plan to pop down to Branson as I've never been there. Not sure what I'm expecting...but I know it will be great fun!