 Hello and welcome to Amaco's Rose project. For this project you're going to need some clay. Here I'm using 67M, it's a terracotta clay. I'm also going to use a rib, a knife, you can choose a plastic knife or a metal knife, a rolling pin, and I'm also going to use a texture mold. This is the leaf mold by Amaco and that's mainly to pull out the textures within the mold. We also will be using some vinegar to help attach the forms after they're made. With this slab it's going to be rolled so thin that I've decided to use a piece of paper towel over it to help prevent sticking out the slab. You can also use a sheet and the thinner the sheet, the less texture normally. After that's done, unfortunately the paper towel is left, some marks on here, but that's where the rib comes in handy. I'm going to smooth out the slab trying not to rip it as I go along. Once it's smooth I will start to cut out with my knife, the area that will become the rosebud. I'm kind of just taking a very organic flow with my knife, you'll notice that it kind of did a wave or a mild heel as I went through. Once that's cut out and you can cut as many as you want from the slab. Always having a tendency to go thinner on the edges, that'll aid in rolling the rose later on. Once you have that you basically push down the edges a little bit and then on one side you start to roll. As you're rolling you kind of start to pinch the bottom together and you will notice that it's starting to take shape. I continue to roll over and as I'm doing that periodically I will kind of press out the top edge, allowing it to rip and just naturally bend the way it wants to. Then I'll go back up and on this one I'm turning kind of sharp so the leaf will fold over on itself. It might take a few of these before you figure out exactly the look you want and that's a simple way to make a rose. From there we will move on to making the stem. I prefer to take a little chunk of clay and roll out a coil. You can also use an extruder if you're looking for a very precise stem and it also would aid if you're making a bunch of these. Earlier this week I performed or I made roughly 40 of these and it helped a little bit to use the extruder. So at this point I'm going to cut the stem to probably the length I want. That seems a little long for the vase. So I'm going to then go with that length and I'm going to use a little bit of vinegar after I score and slip this. I also found that if you poke a hole in the bottom of the rose using the blade of the knife just to kind of twist that'll give you a place to insert the stem making a better connection. So once that happens I will use a little vinegar just to help attach the pieces. You can also use slip but I find the vinegar works just as well. It's just vinegar, white vinegar, diluted with water. I will then insert the stem and push around that to join the two. After that's done I kind of shape the stem if I want to do any bends to it or anything like that kind of giving it a natural flow. After that's done I proceed to attach leaves. Using the same slab I'll cut out small slices with a very organic flow. I'm not too worried about the overall shape. I'm more worried about getting something that is small enough to fit on the stem without overpowering it. Now taking the leaf mold by Amaco I'm going to press into some of the areas to give myself some veins on my leaves and a few other textures. You can notice there this one also has a nice rib defect. From there I decided that I actually kind of prefer the rib one more than the other one. So I'm going to use that and I'm also going to make another leaf using the center sprig to pull that rib lime texture. And any of these tools and devices can be found on our website just by following the link in the comments of the YouTube video. After that's done again making hatching marks with the blade of my knife. This just allows the clay to adhere a little bit better applying a little vinegar solution and then I will press that on and allow it to naturally bend the way it should. I like kind of grouping them together and offsetting them on a diagonal just so it gives me a little bit more of an organic feel. And now onto the firing and glazing portion of this project. Here you can see some completed roses that I did earlier during the week. These pieces were made with the 67 M. Terracotta clay and I also finished them with the low-fire matte glaze line by Amaco. This glaze fires to a satiny finish and I think it helps yield a more realistic look in the end. That's where these flowers, especially this rose when this red rosy color gets it's a nice finish. It's a waxy kind of finish. In order to fire these pieces when they were in the kiln I needed to support them. So that's where these devices come in place. These are trivets. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes as you can see here. They also come with this other type. This is a ceramic point and the little nodes are ceramic. I don't prefer that. I actually prefer these little wire nightcrome points. I think they give you less contact surface and they allow for the trivet to release easier from the piece. When placing them in the kiln I like to stagger them about three to four inches and then I'm going to balance the rose head on the first one and then I'm going to rotate in place the second one kind of supporting it on the leaf that gives me six points of contact. That way the flowers completely supported in this project. If I were to use a high-fire clay the piece would continue to shrink as it was going up to the glaze maturing temperature. That would cause the trivets to stay in place while the flower continued to shrink. That would result in potentially the flower touching the kiln shelf as it fell off or it would cause the flat surface of the trivet to touch the whole flower. In the end it would result with a lot of cleaning up. So to prevent that I would suggest using two trivets and low-fire clay on this project. If you're not comfortable with the ceramic portion of this project or you don't have access to a kiln you can take a look at the comments section of the video to find a list of other suitable materials that don't require a kiln. We look forward to seeing how your flowers come out and what other possibilities you come up with.