Terracotta kitchen tiles -- impress mould tutorial

So, time to do the kitchen floor in the William and Mary house.  I decided to use air drying clay for the first time.  I was amazed to find terracotta coloured clay in my local art supply shop the other day.  I'd never seen coloured air dry clay before, and I was so bowled over by the novelty of it I decided to use it for the kitchen floor.  I used a tile impress mould from Malcolm's Miniatures for these. 

When I'd used my impress moulds in the past, it was on quite small bits of rolled out polymer clay (for the insides of fireplaces and the like).  This was a much bigger project, about 15" deep and 11 inches wide!

I started rolling out the clay on a piece of parchment (or baking) paper.  Not a great idea, because although the parchment paper keeps the clay from sticking, it also wrinkles.  Note:  If you have something hard and smooth to roll your clay out on, it would go much better :)  I started rolling out with a (full) wine bottle until David took it away from me, muttering something about the sediment :)  He then returned with my kitchen rolling pin and placed it firmly in my hand!

I just couldn't get a big enough piece rolled out to the right thickness to cover the kitchen floor at one go, so I decided to piece it together on the floor itself, and then make it smooth.

I spread white glue on the floor and then began piecing in chunks of thinly rolled clay.  I tried to put the straight edges of my chunks along the perimeter of the room.

Once I had all the floor covered, I rolled it smoother with the rolling pin.  You can see little air bubbles in the above photo.  I just pricked them with a nail or stylus and rerolled over them. 

I started from the back.  I should have started from the front edge, so that a row of complete tiles would be right on the most visible part!  I started off very carefully matching things up, but got a little sloppy later on (as is inevitable with me).  When I was done, I neatened the edges where the foam and plywood will be glued.

Now I need to let it dry until Friday or Saturday, and then I'll paint it. That should conceal a world of irregularities!