Mug Tutorial with Template

Hey friends, welcome back to another pottery tutorial. So I finally made a extra large mug for all of you big coffee and tea drinkers. This is a pretty simple one. This is very suitable for beginners. So let's get into it. So first thing you need to do is piece together the two parts of C14. These parts just had to be printed separately because they're a little bit too big for one page of paper. Next we're going to roll out some clay here. So I started with 1.4 kilo of clay, but I'm definitely not going to be using that much. I think at the end I used about 600 grams of clay. So you always need to start out with a bit more when you're working with slab pottery because you need to, you know, have some extra that you can cut off. So first I'm going to start rolling out my half centimeter slab. We're going to be using the half centimeter slab for C14 and C15. And then I'm going to use my scraps and I'm going to wedge them up really good again so that there's no air bubbles. And I'm going to roll those out at one centimeter. So this is for the handle. This is C16 and I really just like to make the handles a little bit thicker. If you prefer a thinner handle, you can also use a half centimeter slab for this as well. But yeah, this is what I prefer. And then after that, as usual, I'm going to put my slab pieces in front of the fan. I really like to put my pieces in front of the fan for about 10 minutes. This helps them to firm up and, you know, not be so floppy when I'm working with them. Okay, first we're going to start with building the body of the mug. So you want to work with the large rectangle first. And we're going to be attaching these two shorter edges of the rectangle. So you want to cut those edges at a 45 degree angle. I have this little tool here, but you can use a knife or anything that you have. Then you want to score. And if you need to, you can add some slip here as well. My clay was fresh enough that I didn't need to. And I'm just going to overlap those two angled pieces and blend. And don't forget to blend also the inside. Once that's good to go, we're going to attach the bottom here. So as you'll notice, the bottom is a bit larger than it needs to be. This is intentional because you always want to attach first and then trim to size. So I just marked where it's going to sit on this little round slab and score. And once again, you can slip if necessary and just attach. And this is how I like to attach bottoms. And if you have any extra scoring lines on the inside, I just use a little bit of water and a paintbrush to smooth those out. And then you can go ahead and trim off the excess and blend. Of course, this part needs a bit of blending. Okay. And then the fun, exciting thing here is I have included a handle guide. So this guide will perfectly make the exact handle that I'm making here. You can, of course, be as creative as you like to and make your handle any which way you want. But if you want one that looks like mine, go ahead and shape your handle piece according to the guide. And then hot tip, you want to apply your handle over the seam. So if you saw, I'm pointing to the seam right there. This will help disguise your seam and make your pot look a little bit more professional. Then you'll want to mark where the two sides of the handle attach so that you can score that. So you want to score both sides as always. So we're going to score the body of the mug and the handle where they attach and secure it as best as you can. So my handle was a little bit floppy, depending on the dryness of your clay and like the grog content and all these other things. Your clay might be more or less floppy in this stage. So if your clay is floppy, like mine was, all you need to do is support it with some sponges. And if it's really, really floppy and the sponges aren't enough to hold up your pot, you probably want to let your handle dry out a little bit more so it can, you know, hold itself up. And by the way, you also saw me cleaning up extra scoring lines with the paintbrush again. That's what I was doing there. So that's all we're going to be doing today. I will cover the pot with some cloth and tomorrow we'll finish with the cleaning up. I always like to let my pot dry out a little bit so that it's quite firm and, you know, can withstand some rough smoothing. Some smoothing that will be a lot more thorough than you can when the pot is wet and somewhat floppy. So at this point, you just want to smooth it out as best as you want to. Like, you know, at any point you can say, ah, that's good enough. I don't mind some fingerprint marks or, you know, you can get really, really particular and make your pot as factory made as you possibly want to. Yeah, that is just up to your preference. So our pot is done now. So I'm going to let it dry out for about a week and then I'm going to load it into the bisque kiln. I'm just using a simple white glaze on my mug, wiping off the bottom so it doesn't stick to the kiln shelf and then back into the kiln it goes. And here is the final result. I think this mug is so cute. It's just like such a classic shape. The handle itself is like really generous. You can hold it with your whole hand or it's also big enough to slide your hand through and, you know, cozy up on a cold day with a nice cup of tea. Assuming that you print at 100% and your clay shrinks about 10%, this mug will fit about 450 milliliters. That's just shy of half a liter and it sits at 11 centimeters tall. So this is a very generous mug for all of your cozy afternoons with the upcoming winter. I hope that you're in a cozy and warm spot. The template will be linked down below in the description and I hope you have a wonderful day. Bye friends!