Just when you think you're totally rad, something occurs to you and you realize you weren't rad at all. Not even in the vicinity of radness. Your Rad-O-Meter reads zero. Heck, it's not even turned on. Instead, you see you've been an utter and complete dork. A dufus of the highest order.
I had one of the worst nights Sunday night -- my neck, shoulders and back were locked tight and the pain kept me up, well, pretty much all night. All of this due to hand-stamping. With this unignorable result, I knew there was no way I was going to survive my own idea. The quote came to mind from The Mincing Mockingbird, "My Personal Quest Would Have Been Much More Successful Had I Not Gotten Involved." And I have this piece hanging in my studio for obviously very important reasons. Anyway, I got to thinking...
Hey, I have a perfectly good tile press, why can't I use that? LO! YES. Cut the handle off the stamp with a hacksaw! Why not? Rather than pressing clay into a mold, why couldn't I press a mold into the clay? Out came the hacksaw and off came the handle. I zipped down to Potter's Center, got more clay and immediately dove in.
It worked. Beautifully! And with such ease. Nary a smidgen of pressure did the job! And what's more -- in a quarter of the time! In the time it took me to hand-press ten tiles -- about thirty minutes -- Sir Squish (my tile press) did in ten. BUCK A WAH.
Only a finger's touch does the job! I can sleep again! I got my tile press from J & J Mold Company and it's da bomb. Each one is hand made and works like a dream. It's geared, so the task of pressing is a breeze.
I've also gotten more proficient at rolling, so I'm getting more cut-outs from a single slab -- yay!So I cranked up Siouxsie's Mantaray album and pressed away! I have all my Christmas tiles pressed in the blink of an eye, and now I can dive into sale pieces. But what irony! Though I now have plenty of clay and have the system down, I've run out of drywall boards! DOH! So I'm off to procure more. I suspect the next thing I'll run out of is space in the garage for drying. Oy.
"New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!" ~ Arthur C. Clarke