PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Part 3

I went back to pick up my latest pottery piece from The Pottery Stop and was sort of surprised with the results. The vase turned out great on some sides...on others the design did not come out quite as I intended...but overall it was a pretty successful experiment!

 

The side with the red bird is the one I'm happiest with. Even though the branch near the top didn't come out quite as visible as I would have liked (I underestimated the darkness of the dark blue I used for the top), it looks pretty close to what I had in mind. The birdie is so fat and cute!

 

 

Here are some of the other views...

 

I'm not thrilled with how the side with the monarch butterfly below turned out...I think I was rushing to finish on the leaves and they didn't come out quite right.

 

The colors on the leaf were not what I was expecting for some reason! Haha. Otherwise I am happy with the dragonfly panel though. 

 

 

This side has a bird on it but you can barely see the top because I used too dark of a background, unfortunately. Otherwise it looks really pretty...sigh.

Vase bottom...I guess it got a little scratched in transit to the kiln?

Overall the vase was sort of an ambitious project for a beginner at PYOP so I'm fairly pleased with it...and ok with the slightly imperfect results. Hey, I can always go back and do it again! It was lots of fun to work on :) What a great crafty activity to do with friends!

Paint your own pottery, Part 2

Brie and I went back to The Pottery Stop on Friday and finished up our new pieces (a rectangular vase in my case). Also,  we picked up the pieces that had been fired the week before and they came out AWESOME. I friggin love mine, it turned out pretty much exactly how I pictured it.

 

 

  

 

 

First I painted the jewelry box all black for a base coat. Then I used a diagram of a butterfly I googled to figure out what the wings should look like, and painted the outline on  with wax resist. I added some leaves to the top and while waiting for it to dry, painted a ribbon of flowers and leaves on the bottom piece using the wax resist. After that it was just a matter of coloring it in with paints.

 

Such a cool and unique piece, I'm so pleased with how it turned out!  It really has the stained glass feel I was going for. Yay!

 

Can't wait to pick up my vase next weekend and see how that turned out too :)

 

Owl watercolors for special occasions!

This weekend I celebrated both Brie's birthday and Mark & Rachel's baby shower...and I painted a sweet little owl for both. Edy helped by sitting on my knee and trying to eat the paintbrush.

 

I painted Brie's owl in the colors she has in her house, so she could put him in any room.

 

For Mark & Rachel, I wanted to make the colors of the owl gender-neutral since it will be a surprise whether they are having a boy or girl.
 

 

Didn't they come out cute? I'm surprised I hadn't painted owls sooner since I made like 8000 of them out of felt :P

 

materials: pencil, Prang semi-moist watercolors on Canson Montval Watercolor Block, Faber-Castell PITT artist pen (brush) in #177.