Paint Your Own Pottery

Back in elementary school I attended a few birthday parties at a local paint-your-own-pottery studio. Basically you selected a ceramic piece, chose a few colors, and painted to your heart's desire. Then a few days later, your custom decorated piece was ready to be picked up and brought home.

Fast forward about 15 years, and I found myself doing the same thing. In 2012 my mom, siblings, Lauren, Heather, and I discovered Color Me Mine. Three years ago I painted my first cereal bowl, completely covered in tiny dots. Everyone (except Frank) had so much fun expressing themselves in this way, that we kind of made it a tradition and have been going back at least once a year since then.

While home for the holidays last month, my mom, Lauren, and I were eager to go to Color Me Mine again. We planned to on December 20 but I decided to change up my design routine. In the past I've painted all of my ceramics with tiny dots. Although this technique gives a nice finished texture and looks really cool, I was ready for something completely different. My current painted pottery "collection" contains a hearty sized cereal bowl, a smaller bowl, a star-shaped decorative dish, and a black and white tall vase. My favorite and definitely most used item is my initial cereal bowl, mainly for its huge size. Even though I wanted to change how I decorated my piece, I still wanted to stick with my favorite cereal bowl.

I decided that I wanted to eventually have a "collection" of hand painted fruit bowls. I opted for strawberries on my first bowl with a solid pink on the inside. I just love how my bowl turned out, so much so that we all made reservations to go back to Color Me Mine on New Year's Eve. They were offering a two day special; if you purchased at least $15 in ceramics, you got to paint a free mug. Of course we had to this, even though Lauren and I had already committed to preparing the majority of the food for NYE nachos!

This time I went with pineapple on my bowl with a blue interior. For now I want to stick to painting just the fruit I actually like. I'm a pretty picky eater when it comes to fruit, so we'll see how this pans out. On my free mug I attempted to paint a very bright and colorful town with multicolored, different styled houses. These two pieces of pottery weren't ready to be picked up (they have to be fired in a kiln) by the time Lauren and I hopped back on a plane to Philadelphia. Hopefully though my parents will be able to bring our pieces with them when they come and visit in March.

I'm far from being a good freehand painter, but I love painting my own pottery nonetheless. It's fun to have the freedom to transform a solid white object into basically anything you want with tons of paint, and be able to use and cherish something you created.