Tweaking An Inlay Clay Design

This is another clay medallion made with my inlay technique. Instead of using a stamp, I used a tile with a raised design as the "stamp." Because of the smooth surface on the tile, I dusted the clay with cornstarch, rather than the stamp, before pressing the design into the background clay.

It occurs to me that I could probably use multiple colors in the inlay designs. For instance, I might make this design with the flower red, the outline green, and the rest blue on a sea of terra cotta colored clay.

I have noticed that it's actually not that hard to remove the inlay before sealing it in, using an exacto knife. For instance, when I had a fingernail groove in the clay that caught the black inlay, I dug out the black and pushed in more of the gold background clay.