Pot Painting & Decopatch

Here in Sheffield we have two, that I know of,  pottery painting shops Fired Arts and Planet Pot. If you love anything creative to do with paper, paints or pottery than this is most likely a shop for you! 

Fired Arts has seating on two floors the top floor being used mostly for children's parties. If you are wanting to go with a group of ten or more than you can hire out the whole place whether this is for a hen party, team building, a birthday or just an evening with friends and a bottle or two of wine. You can paint a huge variety of pots a simple cup and saucer, a milk jug or why not a pot cow butter dish?! 

This is what the full sheet of paper looked like on my cup

You can also create a funky design with something called decopatch. You chose one pot or cardboard item to decopatch, one full size piece of patterned paper, a glue paint brush, a tub of glue and finally you get a box with a range of the paper in smaller pieces. 

From then on it's simple as it resembles the paper mache process. You a tear a small piece of paper, spread glue where you want the paper to be, place the piece of paper when you have glued, glue over the piece of paper you have just put down making sure there are no air bubbles under neath.

Just to give you an idea what sort of affect a build up of different papers can give

 Finally if it is something that you will eat/drink off, or will need to be cleaned or get wet it will need to varnished by the professionals at the shop, you generally leave it for around 3-4 days before you can go pick it up from the shop. If it's just a decoration then you can take it away that day.

Here are a few pictures of the cup and saucer I decopatched on Tuesday, just to give you an idea of the sort of affect that it gives. I personally love how it looks and that is completely unique, no-one else will have this cup and saucer which kind of makes me feel special . . . 

This is my finished cup!

And here is the matching saucer! 

I enjoy my trips to Fired Arts so much when I leave the shop I'm thinking of what I could make an excuse to go back and make next time! I would highly suggest it if you need somewhere to just go think of nothing or try something different with a friend while eating a slice of cake and drinking tea.

Try see if you can root out a shop like this in your city?