Teaching Experience

For this weeks project I taught my friend Melissa how to make beads. She did not create a design from scratch, but I had her look at my flower cane and ask her what she would want to add to the design to make it look better. She decided that she wanted to create a layer that had two alternating colors but instead of having squares like the previous layer she wanted to have circles. She picked out the two colors she wanted which were orange and white, and I started explaining to her step by step what to do. The first thing she did was take the clay extruder and put white clay in it and extruded a long white piece. Then she cut it into pieces that were the length of the cane that she is adding to, and did the same thing with the orange clay. After the white and orange clay were cut into equal lengths I told her to then place the logs one color after another onto the log. After she was done adding all the pieces on the cane I told her to then roll out the cane so that all of the new pieces were part of the cane. After she was done with that I asked her if she wanted to add anything else to the cane. She wanted to add a single layer of turquoise to go around the whole cane. I then explained to her how to do it and she followed the steps I instructed. She took the clay and put it through the pasta machine and rolled it out on the thickest setting. Then she wrapped the piece around the cane. I told her to roll it out again and she made the first cut into the cane and it looked great!

The reason why I taught my friend how to make a clay cane or to add on to a clay cane was to see if I have mastered the skill enough to teach someone else how to successfully make a clay design. I would say that with the results I did a very good job on teaching her how to make a clay cane and think that I have the basic skilled mastered. I also decided I wanted to teach my friend because I wanted her to add on to my cane, so it is a project with different creative perspectives. Next week I will try to create a new design I have not attempted and maybe learn a new skill to apply to my clay making.

                       Here is a picture of Melissa extruding the clay 

                     This is Melissa putting on the pieces to the cane. 

                       Here is Melissa using the pasta machine

                           Finished Project