bout a week ago, I broke one of my favorite mugs while washing it.  I had made a series of mugs a few years ago with some clay stamps I made of birds in flight.  I thought it would be challenging to build natural looking flocks on my pots with individual bird stamps.  I snapped the photo above last winter of the one I kept for myself sitting on the counter.  When I broke it, I was disappointed and then I thought, I think its time to make some more!   I still have the stamps I made, and had forgotten only a little of what I had learned about making believable flocks.   I make them with a multi-step process called slip inlay.

When the pots were leather-hard, I stamped them and brushed an iron slip (40% iron, 60 % clay) into the stamped designs:

Then when the added slip has dried to a leather-hard consistency, it is cleaned off with a soft long haired brush and clean water.  You have to wash the brush out in clean water constantly to lift all the excess slip off the surface.  After bisque-firing them, they will be glazed in a glaze that the iron slip come through well.  Also, while I was stamping them outside this week, a bird landed only 4 feet from me before realizing I was there:)