Pottery Class

Today we had pottery class.  Sarah, Helen and I braved the fog and the cold and arrived at The Artshed at Westmill Farm, Ware.  We joined the other ladies in the Artshed and settled in.  Everyone was really friendly and it seemed nobody had a clue what they were doing either so that was reassuring - except for the teacher of course!!

We started off rolling out our clay ready to make our vases.  That in itself was tough work, I've always battled with clay and found it hard to use - what on earth was I doing on a pottery class?!  Once the clay was rolled out to the required thickness we then had to choose what indentation or pattern we wanted on our vases.  We chose from designs on various wallpapers and stamps.  I chose a wallpaper with a fairly raised pattern, this had to be placed face down on the clay and then rolled over with the rolling pin.

The clay was left to dry out a bit and we moved onto making pinch pots.  Taking a large ish lump of clay we had to make it round and then stick our thumb into it to make a hole.  Then whilst trying to make the pot stay round - easier said than done - we had to work the clay to make the pot by pinching and stretching out the clay.  Hmmm my excuse was having nails really doesn't help with clay work.

My pots were a bit rubbish to be honest, I wasn't especially proud of them, but hey I gave it a go.

Ok maybe they don't actually look to bad in the photo, not bad for a first attempt.  Sarah and Helen seemed to be doing a much better job.

Once the pots were made we moved onto Christmas Decs, woohoo this was much simpler.  We simply rolled out the clay and using cutters cut out the shapes we wanted to use for your decorations.  We used lace and stamps to make the shapes have patterns on them.  I chose to make a lot of hearts using the lace to make a cute pattern on them. I hope that by choosing hearts, and glazing them white, I can use them all year around and not just at Christmas.

The next tricky part was making the actual vase.  We cut out the bases and then rolled out clay (that we had prepared first thing) around it.  Not as easy as you think people!!   Looking around the room there were a variety of different designs of vases, everyone seemed to be pulling faces, and looking a bit anxious.  BUT all seemed to go well and after a while there were a lot of happy faces.

Now onto the decorating.  We started glazing our pots, vases and decorations.  There was a wide range of colour schemes going on throughout the room.  I hoped for a shabby chic look for my pottery so opted for white.  Fingers crossed it turns out how I envisaged it too once its been fired.

We had a great day at The Artshed.  Becky was telling us all about the other courses they run and I'm keen to get us booked in for some more soon.  It will be good to get Hertfordshire Creative Stuff more creative.