How to Make a Clay Coil Pot

Clay coil pots can be very easy to make or very complicated to make. Clay coil pots can be used with any type of decorations and can serve many purposes if not purely decorative. You can sometimes find clay coil pots in stores, but why buy something when you can make it yourself. Making a clay coil pot yourself often means spending less money and more satisfaction. The difficulty level depends on what you are trying to achieve, but for the most part this is craft for pretty much anyone who wants to try it. Here's how you do it:

Materials
-clay (if you don't have a kiln, make sure it's the kind you can fire in the oven or let air dry)
-newspaper
-slip (which you can make)
-fork

Instructions
1. The first thing you have to do is lay down some newspaper so that the clay won't stick to your work area. You can also use a cutting board if you don't want to use newspaper.

2. Slip is used as a sort of glue to secure the clay together. Slip is extremely important in making a clay coil pot, so be sure you don't forget it. To make slip all you have to do is get some water and add in some very small pieces of clay so that they become very wet and easy to spread.

3. Before you start making your coils, you will need to knead the clay to make sure that there are no air bubbles. If you are planning on letting your clay coil pot air dry, you can skip this step. If you are going to fire the clay, the air bubbles need to be removed to make sure that it does not blow up while being fired.

4. Now it's time to start working with the clay. As with any vase or pot, a base is needed to begin. Take a piece of your clay and roll it out like a snake. Make sure that you keep the clay covered up when you're not using it so it won't dry up and become hard to work with. You can make it however long you want, but make sure your coil is not too thick.

5. To make the base you'll have to roll the coil around itself in a circle. Before you do this though, score the edges of the inside of the coil. As you are rolling apply the slip where the edges are scored and make sure the base is secure. Stop when you feel your base is large enough.

6. To build up your clay coil pot, you will need to create more coils. Only do it one at a time to make sure that they clay doesn't dry out. When you have created a new coil, slip and score and edges of the base and the new coil and secure them together. Repeat this step will all the other coils until you reach the last one in your clay coil pot.