How to make a clay pot at home. How to make a decorative flower pot from clay

Any gardener knows that there are never too many flower pots. In this article we will tell you how to make a very simple decorative pot for clay flowers. To make such a flower pot you do not need virtually any skills. Even a beginner or a child can handle the project.

Materials and tools for making a flower pot:

clay that does not require firing
plastic container
rolling pin
stationery or construction knife
acrylic paint
paint brushes

How to make a clay flower pot with your own hands

Roll out the clay using a rolling pin. Place a plastic container on the resulting layer, cut the clay, moving the knife along the edge of the container. This will give you the base of the pot.

Mix the remaining clay and roll it out again into a long narrow strip. The strip should be long enough to wrap around the sides of the container.

Make the sides of the pot from a strip of clay. The edges of the strip can be overlapped or cut and joined at the ends.

After wetting your fingers with water, smooth out all seams.

Let the clay dry for 1-2 days. When the walls have hardened, the pot can be turned over to provide air access to the bottom of the pot.

When the bottom is dry, you can start painting the pot.

Mix the paint with water. Use a wide brush to paint the bottom half of the pot.

Note: It is not necessary for the paint to lay down in an even layer. A little carelessness allows you to achieve a good result - it immediately becomes clear that the pot was made by yourself.

If necessary, the paint can be applied in several layers.

Mix a drop of black acrylic paint with a few drops of water.

Dip a brush in black paint and then, running your fingers along the bristles, spray it onto the sides of the pot.

Advice: this procedure It is advisable to do it outside, otherwise you risk splashing furniture and walls.

After the paint has dried, the surface of the pot can be varnished.

Attention: a pot made of unfired clay should not be exposed to moisture, so you need to place a plastic or metal container inside, and only then fill the pot with soil and plant the plants.

Original article in English.

Original DIY clay pot

It's always nice to look at things in the house that have been made with my own hands. They significantly fill the house with comfort and give a special soft charm to the interior. Also, such things can say a lot about the owner’s tastes or hobbies. In these important details special place are occupied by flower pots, which are often placed in the most visible places at home: windowsill, table, chest of drawers, shelf, etc. For an original interior, you should choose the same interesting and creative containers for flowers, and then the atmosphere in your home will become much more pleasant. DIY flower pots are a wonderful decorative element that can be made to the individual measurements of your favorite plants.

In order to make original hand-made clay pots, You will need:

a sharp knife for cutting clay or paper;
polymer clay or any other intended for modeling;
baking paper;
template for the future pot;
a stick with a rounded end for smoothing corners;
rolling pin for rolling out clay.

Some clarifications before starting

For this craft, it is best to take decorative polymer clay. It hardens easily on its own, without requiring additional drying. If you cannot find one, then you can use the most ordinary clay for modeling, but you will need to bake it so that it hardens. It is not necessary to use a template before starting hand-made work. After all, you can always use your imagination, improvising on the fly. But it’s worth considering that you may end up with a slightly disproportionate pot, so it’s best to think through and draw the design of the future container in advance, and then just print it out.

So let's get started!

1. First you need to put the clay on baking paper and roll it out with a rolling pin into a layer approximately 1 cm thick.

2. If you decide to use ready-made template, then you need to carefully cut the clay along its contour or cut out parts of the pot by eye.

3. Next, you need to tightly connect the sides of the pot, and then use a stick to carefully cover and smooth out all the cracks. Just remember to hold the opposite side of the pot wall with your hand so that it does not sag.

4. When the pot is completely ready, you need to let it dry completely. And the capacity from polymer clay needs to be dried in the oven. Detailed instructions for baking, you can read the packaging of the clay, because it may differ from different types material.

After your pot has completely hardened, all that remains is to check if it is leaking, and then plant your favorite plants in it. You can also paint the pot to your taste, or leave it in its original form. We invite you to look at a few original ideas for decorating pots with your own hands.

In addition, you can not only simply paint the pot with your favorite colors, but also use the “ombre” technique, as in the photo below.

Then you can start with something simpler - for example, by sculpting a flower pot.

To make a pot you will need clay and water. Mix the clay with water until a homogeneous mass is obtained in the form of a thick dough. The resulting mass should be free of bubbles, for this you need to knead thoroughly. Adjust the consistency of the clay with water to prevent it from drying out. As a result of kneading, you should get a lump that does not stick to your hands.

We begin the work of sculpting pots by making the bottom. Separate from total mass a small lump. Roll out a pancake from it, then cut out a circle. You can use improvised objects to achieve perfect shape circle (mug, plate, etc.) If you want to look various examples clay pots - go to the website.

To make the walls of a homemade pot, you need to make clay “sausages” with a diameter of no more than half a centimeter. Do not forget to moisten the bottom and walls of the pot with water so that the product does not dry out. “Sausages” (bundles) of clay can be made in advance, or they can be rolled as needed.

We carefully sculpt the clay strands one at a time to the bottom of the pot, laying them out around the circumference. Try not to go over the edges. When building up the walls, do not forget to moisten the clay with water. After completing one bundle, take the next one and continue the manufacturing procedure. Be careful to ensure that the pot is even and symmetrical.

If you want to make the pot “pot-bellied,” apply tourniquets, leading them out. If your pot should end up with parameters “90x60x90”, follow the same steps, but inward. Do this until your product reaches the desired shape.

Once you have finished sculpting the pot, slowly wrap it in a rag or newspaper, then set it upside down. It will take at least 2 days for it to dry completely. Once the pot is well and thoroughly dry, you can start firing it.

Watch the clay modeling lessons in the video, they show many nuances.

Firing is last stage work that takes place in two stages. When you fire a pot for the first time, excess moisture evaporates from it, and only with repeated firing will it become durable.

During the initial firing, the temperature should be controlled: it should not exceed 300 degrees. Continue heating the product at this temperature for 2 - 3 hours. Be careful: sudden changes in temperature will only ruin your work. Do everything carefully and in a hurry. When firing the pot again, we will increase the temperature to 580 degrees, but we will reduce the time to only 15 minutes. And in the end, we heat the product to 900 degrees for the same duration. At the end of the heating process, do not rush to remove the product from the oven, let it cool until room temperature. The pot is ready!

Transforming clay into the most ordinary kitchen pot is an amazing process.

In fact, compare a piece of clay with a clay shard. Clay is crumbly and loose. The shard is dense and strong. The clay gets wet from the water and turns into dough. The shard does not change due to water. Clay can be given any shape: it can be sculpted, rolled into plates, twisted into ropes. The shape of a shard cannot be changed unless it is broken into pieces.

To understand all this, let's try to make a clay pot ourselves. It's not that difficult at all. They say that “it’s not the gods who burn the pots.”

To fashion a pot out of clay, you first need to prepare clay dough - mix clay with water. But we will not take anything on faith, but ask: is it possible to do without water?

It turns out that it is possible. A press was invented that molds clay products - tiles, dishes, floor tiles - without a single drop of water. Dry clay is placed in a steel mold and pressed with a steel die. True, this requires enormous pressure - two hundred atmospheres. Do you know what this means? To squeeze a book with such force, you would have to put four freight cars loaded to the top on top of it, one above the other. But you and I don’t have such a press. Of course, it is impossible to squeeze clay with such force with your hands.

Just as oil reduces friction in machines, water in clay dough reduces friction between individual clay particles. But molding consists of moving particles, forcing them to be positioned the way we want. And besides, the water does not allow them to crumble, but holds them one next to the other.

But this is not enough: forming clay product under pressure, we not only give it shape, but also compress it, making it denser. And water helps us with this.

If a product made from clay dough is dried, the water will evaporate. And because the clay particles come closer together, the product becomes denser. A clay brick can shorten by a whole quarter when it dries out.

The only bad thing is that, when the clay product dries out, it very often cracks, like the bottom of a dried-up puddle. You've probably seen cracks in clay soil that has dried out after rain. They resemble those huge chasms that form on the surface of the earth during an earthquake.

Dried cracked clay

To prevent the clay from cracking when drying, sand is added to it. Grains of sand, sitting here and there in the clay, hold it together like a strong frame or skeleton, and prevent it from shrinking too much.

After we have understood all this, we can get to work. Let's take out a piece of clay, add water to it - about a third - and knead it. If you add more water, the dough will get dirty on your hands; if less, it will crumble.

Add some very fine sand to the dough. Knead well so that the sand is not visible. All that remains is to fashion the pot.

The dough may not be successful the first time - after all, there are different types of clay. Some clays require more sand, others less. The composition of the test is best determined by experience. If one pot doesn't work out, we'll make another until we get what we need.

Here the pot is sculpted. But how wrong and unsightly he is! If you look at it from above, you can see that it is not round, but elongated, like the face of a person with a swollen cheek.

And it would be difficult to do better. After all, it’s not at all easy to do by eye so that the walls everywhere are equally spaced from the middle. It's like drawing a circle without a compass.

Potters form pots on a special machine. A pottery machine is a round board that rotates on an axis. It is driven by the foot.

The potter places a piece of dough in the middle of the board and, pressing thumb inside the dough, holding it with the rest of your fingers from the outside. While rotating, the dough rubs against the potter's fingers and is leveled into a round wall. It's the same as drawing a circle by holding the compass steady and rotating the paper. The compass is the stationary hand of the potter, and the rotating paper is the round board of the potter's press.

Whether it’s good or bad, the pot is sculpted. Let's put it on a shelf somewhere to dry for two days.

When it dries, you will need to burn it. If the pot is not burned, it will not be possible to pour water into it. After all, water will turn unfired clay into dough again. It would be nice to have a pot that would get soggy from the water and crumble into mush!

Place the pot in the oven over hot coals.

Something bad can happen here. If the pot is not dried well, it will fall apart.

The heat will turn the water remaining in the clay into steam. And since steam takes many times more space than water, it will tear the walls of the pot and come out into the wild. To prevent this from happening, the pot must be well dried.

While it’s standing in the oven, we’ll figure out why we hid it there.

During firing, clay particles are welded and fused together. This means that the burnt shard no longer consists of individual particles that can be easily moved by moistening with water, but of a continuous, sponge-like mass. That is why you can no longer make dough from a shard.

Pottery kiln

Create a flower pot with your own hands – great idea for the weekend. Creative process will not take much time and effort. The raw materials are easy to find: in the hardware or hardware store closest to your home, or perhaps even in your own pantry or in a neighbor’s garage.

It all depends on what kind of art object you expect to see in the interior of your apartment: a brutal stone pot for or an openwork wicker pot for delicate violets. Choose the option that suits you.

DIY clay pot

Clay is the first material that comes to mind when we're talking about about flower pots. This is the classic that doesn’t require much introduction. So let's get straight to the point.

Required materials

Step by step instructions

Before you start, make sure you have all the necessary tools on hand. To create without distraction, place a rolling pin, a craft knife, brushes and a container of water on your workbench.

The clay needs to be kneaded well. The modeling mass should become homogeneous and pliable.
The main thing is a flat bottom. Roll out the clay into a layer. The thickness of the layer is equal to the desired thickness of the future pot. Cut the bottom into the shape of a plastic container.
You need to cut a strip out of the remaining clay. Strip sizes are individual. The width of the strip is the height of the walls of the flower pot. And the length should be slightly longer base circumference.
We connect the parts to form a pot.
Now we need a little water to wet our fingers and smooth out the joints of the parts - “solder” the seams.
Most important stage– drying. Follow the clay manufacturer's recommendations. On average, products need to dry for 24-48 hours.
When the clay is completely dry and hardened, we begin painting. You can apply 1 or 2 layers of paint, depending on the intensity of the color you want to see in the finished product. At this stage, it is important to include all your imagination in your work.
After the paint has dried, coat the pot with a finishing layer of varnish.
Place a plastic container inside: it will protect the pots from moisture.
We enjoy the result.

Plaster pot

Making pots from plaster is an art. The technology for making the base is simple. And options for decoration finished product many times more than in the case of clay.

Required materials

Gypsum.
Water.
Two plastic containers of the same shape, but different volumes.
Cling film.

Step by step instructions

Prepare a gypsum solution in a 2:1 ratio. Mix it thoroughly.
Container larger size cover the inside cling film, wrap the small container with film on the outside.
Pour about 2 cm of solution into the bottom of a large container. Give it a chance to set.
Place a container of smaller diameter inside.
Pour the remaining gypsum mortar into the void between the walls of the containers.
Leave for 2 hours until the plaster hardens completely.
Carefully remove the plastic molds.
Let's start with the decor.

A plaster pot, like a clay pot, can be painted acrylic paints. Decorate using decoupage technique, cover with shells, cereals, beads, buttons or mosaics. Or even carve patterns directly onto the surface.

Cement pot

It's hard to imagine something more solid than concrete. Therefore, monolithic cement flower pots will organically fit into a serious interior with a claim to steadfastness.

Flower pots can be created from cement in at least two ways. The first one will exactly repeat the instructions for making a plaster pot described above. Only the ingredients will change. The second method is worthy of a more detailed description.

Required materials

Cement.
Sand.
Water.
Terry towel.
Bucket.
Cling film.

Step by step instructions

And if you want something more refined, you can make the surface of the flower pot glossy. To do this, you need to mix the cement mortar not with water, but with silicate glue.

Wicker

Eco-style, rustic, country... If you are close simple shapes and natural materials, then the idea of weaving flower pots with your own hands will inspire you to create a real eco-masterpiece.

Required materials

Step by step instructions

We cut the branches slightly larger than the height of the base pot.
We tightly tie the twigs together to get a cloth that looks like a mat.
Cover the base with burlap.
We attach our “mat” to the burlap using glue.
We secure the structure with jute cord.
The pot is already good, you can leave it as is. Or you can continue to create - braid the flowerpots with thinner branches in the shape of a bird’s nest.

Mosaic

Mosaic – best way give a second life to dishes or tiles that you won’t be able to throw away.

Required materials

Step by step instructions

We prepare the basis of the mosaic - fragments. They can be cut using a tile cutter. But it’s easier to wrap the old dishes in a piece of cloth and give them a few blows with a hammer.
We lay out the fragments, creating a test drawing.
If we are satisfied with the result, we glue the mosaic to the base.
Let the glue dry, following the manufacturer's recommendations.
The final touch is grouting the joints.

This method is perhaps the simplest and most inexpensive. Even despite the low cost, a mosaic pot in the interior will look expensive, like a famous designer item.

Made of wood

Wooden flower pots are not so often found in apartment interiors. Perhaps because wood requires more careful care than plastic, for example. However, you should not be afraid of wooden products. It is enough to treat them with special solutions against moisture and mold.

Required materials

Small blocks of wood.
Varnish for wood.
Bio- and moisture protection for wooden products.

Step by step instructions

The manufacturing process is so simple that it can be done in three steps:

We drill out and then hollow out the core of the block, leaving the bottom untouched.
We impregnate the inside with protective solutions.
We varnish the outside.

Other unusual options

If a person who feels like a real creator, artist, designer gets down to business, then he will be able to create an exclusive thing with his own hands from any available items.

Vinyl records, shoes, hats and bags forgotten on the mezzanine, cans of tea or baby formula, old teapots, cups, plastic bottles, glass jars, unnecessary candlesticks or chandelier shades, cubes from a children's room...

The list of things that collect dust on the shelves can be continued endlessly. But any item on this list can be used as a flowerpot, using various artistic techniques: painting with paints and dot painting with contours, decoupage, embroidery, weaving newspaper tubes, knitting, applique, macrame...

Feel free to adopt our ideas, complement them with your own, and create. You will get a flower pot worthy of taking the most honorable place in the interior of the apartment. The main thing is not to be afraid of experiments!