Every few months my friends Carol and Heather and I try to get together and do something crafty. About a year ago we decided to spend a day doing paper mache. What a colossal failure! But we got one thing out of it — we never want to do paper mache again!
Today it was painting ceramics. Carol has all the glazes and a kiln so we met at a ceramics store in the morning to pick out the pieces we would paint, and then headed to Carol’s house to get busy.
I made wheel thrown pottery many years ago, back before I acquired my best boy Forrest in 2003. It was one of the many things that belonged to my life before Forrest. I probably made pottery for 10 years or so, and actually got pretty good at it.
We have talked about painting ceramics for some time, and I was really looking forward to it. And it was really a fun day.
We tossed the dogs in the back yard and gathered around Carol’s dining table, full of bottles of glazes, brushes, and all kinds of tools and jars, and dug in.
I purchased a big bowl and a big platter and had sort of an idea of what I wanted to do for the design. . . something really simple, and something that would play well with all my colorful Fiesta Ware. So I went with a combo of red, chartreuse and orange, with a black line design.
I did the platter first, and made the cardinal mistake that I often make: I didn’t stop soon enough! I kept going, and went too far. So the black design isn’t what I had pictured, but it’s fine for a firs try. I can’t wait to see what it looks like after it’s fired.
The second piece I made was the bowl, and I stopped before I went to far. I did the basic same design but it’s cleaner and the design is nicer. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
The green in the center of both of these pieces should be quite bright… and that bright green is my favorite color. So it if works, I’ll be very satisfied.
Carol was painting some smaller bowls to replace some she had that she gave away. She really does a great job with the drawing on the bowls — even gets some really cute sheep on there. Sort of puts me to shame.
But it was Heather that really went crazy with her platter. She took a couple hours to paint the radiating sunset colors, blending very carefully. Then she thought about the tree for what seemed like another two hours. Then decided what she wanted to do and forged ahead. I can’t wait to see how this turns out after being fired!
When we were done, I came home and did some sewing, finishing up two paper pieced panel pouches, and a three-pouch set for a work colleague’s daughter who loves lizards.
Tomorrow is a day of puppies! I need a puppy fix.
agilejack 