10 Easy Slab Pottery Ideas & Projects For Beginners

Throwing a pot on a wheel isn’t easy. It takes many tries to make something that looks even slightly symmetrical.

Slab pottery on the other hand is much easier to start out with because it requires no expensive pottery wheel and very few techniques.

To get started, you’ll only need:

• Air dry clay
• Rolling pin
• Wax paper
• Craft Knife
• Pottery Tool Kit

Using air drying clay will make sure you don’t need to use a kiln to fire the clay, and other it’s cheaper than regular clay. But if you have access to a firing service, using regular clay is fine too.

So here are 5 slab pottery ideas that you can try out at home, even without prior pottery experience!

1. Decorative Leaf bowl

These beautiful bowls are easy to make for beginners and create a professional looking product. You can hold your jewelry or some pocket change in smaller ones, or create a fruit bowl out of a larger leaf.

1. Find some leaves that you like the shape of. Search around your neighborhood for suitable sized leaves.
2. Roll out your clay on the wax paper over a flat surface or paper. To make your leaves appear more authentic, aim for a finer thickness. About 7 mm would reduce the danger of breaking your plate.
3. Flatten your leaf firmly onto the clay and then remove to leave an imprint on the clay.
4. Use the tip of a sharp knife to cut along the border of the leaf, and remove the excess clay.
5. Place your slab in a bowl to dry. Alternatively, you could keep it flat with lifelike curled edges by creating a ring with aluminum foil and curl the overlapping edges up or down.
6. To ensure it is completely dry, let it dry for a day on one side and another day on the other side.
7. If you want to give it a more professional finish, you can gently sand it with ultra fine sandpaper, followed by a layer of outdoor satin sealer and voila you are done!

2. Self-draining Soap Dish

This dish is somewhat similar to the first, but is slightly trickier to pull off. This time, choose a smaller leaf with a thick stem. You may want to roll out your clay thicker too to make a durable dish.

1. Once you have cut out your leaf design, place your leaf on a flat surface but stacked on a higher level, like on a book lined with wax paper.
2. Gently use your modelling tool to hollow out the stem as this is the drainage area for your soap dish.
3. Taper the furrowed stem over the edge of your book ensuring it only touches wax paper and let it dry.
4. If you have access to a bisque fire, use it for a more durable finished product.
5. To add detail, you can paint your leaf, add some extra texture, or use a decorative glaze.
6. Coat it with a waterproof glaze and let it dry.
7. Fire again.

3. Textured Cell-Phone Holder Scrolls

These are useful holders to keep your phone in place while charging. They are sold on Etsy but you can try to make them yourself.

This can be a bit more difficult to make as you need to ensure that the phone fits well before you dry it, otherwise it will fall out.

1. Roll your clay out onto wax paper, about 5 mm thick.
2. Cut it out into a rectangle of 30 cm x 5 cm.
3. Flatten your doily or textured material onto the rectangle.
4. Roll either end of your scroll using a small strip of toilet paper inside it, to maintain its form.
5. Wedge more toilet paper on either side of your rolled up scrolls so that it does not unroll while drying.
6. Gently test if your cellphone fits in the gap.
7. If you want to create a gift for somebody, you could carve their name into the finished product before drying.
8. If you would like to paint it, use the same method as mentioned before and leave to dry.

4. Slab Flowerpot

This flower pot is slightly more technical as you will be using a scoring technique, but it is still a doable project for beginners and can easily be painted or decorated.

1. Roll out your clay 1 cm thick.
2. Cut it out a rectangle 30 cm x 5 cm in size and a circle with a diameter of 5 cm.
3. Smooth out your clay with the sponge.
4. Score both pieces with your pottery tool in order to join them together.
5. Create a thin cylinder of clay the same length as the base of the pot and score it
6. Make a slip by mixing a marble-sized wodge of clay with a bit of water. This will be the glue to stick it all together
7. Line the pieces with a layer of slip in the places where they will meet. Place the cylinder on the circumference of the base where it has been scored.
8. Wrap the slab around the circle.
9. Smooth the overlapping edges of the slab to seal them and secure all areas with slip to make sure it is firmly in place.
10. Scrunch up kitchen paper and place inside the planter in order to maintain its form as it dries.
11. Leave it to dry.

5. Slab plate

Making a basic plate is easy, but can become progressively more difficult when you use more advanced techniques to add texture or details. You will create your own unique plates to enjoy for life.

1. Roll out your clay 1/2 to 1 cm thickness.
2. Use a paper plate as a template and cut the clay around its circumference.
3. Place the slab circle inside the plate and sandwich it between a second plate and firmly press it down.
4. Allow it to dry in the plate mold and decorate.

6. Slab pottery cups

Cups and mugs are the most stereotypical pottery project you can think of when you are using a pottery wheel.

But did you know you can make cups with slab pottery techniques as well?!

1. Start off by using a rolling pin to flatten a piece of clay.
2. Cut out a circle to form the base of your mug.
3. Roll out another lump of clay into a large rectangular shape.
4. Using a ruler and knife, cut out a perfect rectangle.
5. Etch one of the sides, apply some slip, and wrap it around the circular base.
6. Remove some of the clay if you have too much.
7. Etch and apply additional slip to close the cup.
8. Use your finger to smooth out the edges.
9. Once your cup is done, you can also add a handle.

7. Slab pottery trays

Throwing clay with a wheel is often faster than making the same things with slab pottery techniques.

But if you are making rectangular shaped objects, it’s completely the opposite!

That’s why making rectangular plates and trays is a great slab pottery project to try out.

1. Start off by rolling a large rectangular slab of clay.
2. Cut the clay in the size or shape that you want.
3. Bend the side of the rectangular one at a time to form the tray
4. If you want you can add some feet to the tray.

8. Ceramic tray

Ceramic trays are very easy to make. You can first make the slap in any size and shape you want. Then you can use thinner strips or coils to make the edges of your tray.

You can use these trays to keep your important possessions such as jewelry or your keys. Or with a few small modifications, you could turn it into an ashtray as well.

9. Serving tray with handles

If you love to cook, you know how useful a large serving tray can be to feed the whole family at once.

And with some basic pottery techniques, it’s pretty easy to make one of these. Making one of these is very similar to making a standard tray but add slightly higher edges and two handles.

Just make sure that your final product is food-safe by using an appropriate glaze and firing temperatures.

10. Ceramic baskets

Making ceramic baskets is a fun way to combine basic weaving techniques with pottery.

The easiest way to make them is by using a bowl or basket of the right size as the mold. After preparing the strips of clay, you can then place them in the mold one by one.

The most basic weaving pattern you can use is of course the plain weave. But if your clay strips are thin enough and you want an extra challenge, you could even try more advanced patterns.

More pottery ideas!

You can never have too many new ideas. So if the slab pottery ideas above weren’t exactly what you were looking for, you can also check out some of our other pottery ideas such as:

• Easy pottery ideas
• Coil pottery ideas
• Cute pottery ideas
• Handbuilding pottery ideas
• Pottery painting ideas