For Sugarplum’s first father’s day, we went with a friend to a pottery painting studio in Dublin. We painted a platter for hubby which has been proudly displayed in our kitchen cabinet since we returned to Florida two years ago.
This year I decided to do another piece for hubby. Even though it wasn’t Doodle’s official first father’s day, I was in no condition to do it last year (Doodle was only a few weeks old!) so we went this year and we had so much fun working together to make a memory piece for our family to have.
We chose the largest (and most expensive!) platter they had and I let the girls choose the colors they thought hubby would like. They chose yellow, orange, bright green and dark blue. We started by painting the entire platter with multiple coats of the yellow then I let the girls paint whatever they wanted with the orange and green.
We saved the blue for last which we used to do each of the kids’ handprints and also the year.
If you’ve never done painted pottery before, it can be a little confusing. The colors you paint are not anywhere near the colors the finished product will be after it is glazed and fired (they are usually much duller and sometimes not even the same color at all). It can also be hard to tell with the lighter colors if you have done enough coats to fully cover the piece. It is recommended to do at least three coats to get full coverage but on a giant piece like ours with three people painting, it can be hard to tell which parts are covered and which need more attention.
But I think our platter came out really great and I hope to keep pottery painting as a fun family event. (Even hubby enjoyed it when we went together in Oklahoma when we were engaged, he painted an airplane bank which he displays proudly with his work airplanes!)
