Date Week: Her Choice- Painting Pottery

Yesterday was my choice of activity for Nils and my date week. I choose painting pottery. We arrived at Get Your Paint On and I instantly knew what I was wanting to paint- a large cookie jar for my dogs' treats. Nils knew he wanted to make a coffee cup and had several to choose from. He decided on the largest one since he drinks so much coffee.

After you decide on your piece, you go and wash your hands and pick out your colors of paint, brushes, stencils, sponges, stamps, and whether or not you want to do a technique like marbling. Then you take a damp sponge and wipe down your piece, I guess to remove any surface dust. Then the fun begins!

Nils choose to do a marbling inside his mug and sponge paint technique of light and bright aqua and light papaya on the outside since he claims he isn't a good painter. I took the more ambitious route and used speckled white inside the jar and then used masking tape to tape off stripes down my jar in which I alternated painting them light sky blue, light jade, taupe and a sandy beige color- the colors of our bedroom. After it dried I stenciled a pretty speckled orange starfish to go with the beachy theme of our room, and the beachy theme of Cayman's name. I used a darker orange to make a texture appearance on the starfish as well. Since my piece was obviously taking longer, Nils helped me by painting the lid of my jar the same light aqua that was in the stripes.

After we finished we simply left all the paints, brushes, and mess for the staff. That's so cool- you have the fun and they clean it up for you, LOL! We leave the pieces there to be glazed and fired and get to pick them up in about 5 to 7 days. It will be interesting to see what it will look like afterward since all the colors are so much more muted and lighter than after they have been fired. I was also given a frequent buyers card. Every time you make a purchase, they take your total and write it on the card. After ten purchases, they take the average from those ten purchases and basically give you that amount in store credit! This purchase came to $43.46 which was much less than I expected! I definitely plan on doing it again, it was so much fun! Nils said he had a good time too.




Later that night we went to my friend, Alicia's house to work on my mermaid Halloween costume that I will be wearing for a Halloween party on the 1st. I bought sparkly aqua material for my tail and this cool silver pleated material for the fins. Alicia had it all measured, pinned and fitted and was about to sew it on the sewing machine when we noted her new puppy, Bindi, under the craft table, happily chewing the power cord to her fairly new, very expensive sewing machine! EEK!

So we had to lock all three dogs- her corgi- Kiwi, the new mix breed puppy Bindi and my longhair dachshund puppy- Cayman, and put them all in Kiwi's cage so we could make an emergency run to Walmart to see if we could find a power cord that would fit and work with her machine. We ran through Walmart- already on a tight time frame since my mom was watching Shaylee- searching through the home improvement, craft and finally electronics departments. It was my idea to check out the boombox CD players and luckily we found one that had the same power cord as the sewing machine. So the boombox, a baby gate (to prevent any further problems with the new puppy) and two frozen pizzas for dinner were purchased. The whole ordeal took a good chunk of our time up and by 10:30 pm it was time for Nils and I and Cayman to head home as it was getting late and my mom had to work the next day. Alicia kept the materials as all that was left was adding the fins to the tail which she said she could work on later,without me. She's such a good friend!

So it was a really good day even with a few minor mishaps!