Terracotta pinch pot cold finished with paint and beeswax

No decals to share today – maybe next post….  This pinch pot is a sample project that I made for my after school kid’s clay class and was inspired by the book  Finding One’s Way With Clay: Creating Pinched Pottery and Working With Colored Clayswritten by Paulus Berensohn.  I thought it would be a great project for my students whose ages range from 2nd – 5th grade.  I tried to make it a fun project by instructing the kids to animate their pots by adding noses and in some cases full blown faces on their pinch pots.

Terracotta nose pinch pot cold finished – my daughter's nose pot

I normally use low fire white earthenware for my kids classes and decided to mix it up and bring in a terracotta.  You should have seen the kids reactions!  Their whole clay knowledge base was turned upside down – they had no idea that clay comes in colors and of course I had lots of potty talk happening.  “Ewwww -  this clay looks like poop!” etc. etc. 

During our last class, we used acrylic paints to finish the pots and then sealed the exteriors with beeswax as an alternative to glazing since I won’t see the kids till mid January.  We planted grass seed in the pots – which should be fun if it grows.  The grass in my daughter’s pot is just now starting to sprout – I’ll post a follow up photo if it turns out. I think I’m going to make some more pinch pots – it was pretty satisfying.

Meanwhile, I added a WordPress Plugin that allows user to edit their own comments now for a set period of time in the event of typos etc.  – if you have any problems with it, let me know.  I also recently upgraded to WP 2.7 which allows nested comments, but it’s not functional on my blog yet because I need to update my theme to be compatible with 2.7.  I just haven’t had the motivation to update it yet.

I have some errands to run right now so until later,

~Cynthia

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.