Christmas present idea: Ceramic workshop

I thought I'd share one of the nicest Christmas presents I received in the past. One really nice idea for a Christmas present is arranging a workshop for someone to learn a new skill, particularly one where they can make something. Groupon offers discounted workshops and these seem really nice ideas- dress-making, millinery etc (I've been sooo tempted!). However, I somehow think these are still expensive sometimes, certainly for a present, even if discounted. One very reasonable workshop to do is ceramic painting. A couple of years ago, one of our lovely Christmas presents I completely forgot to mention was that J paid for us to visit i-pots in Hexham.  This is a ceramics workshop where you pay to paint a clay item.  It's brilliant value because it only costs £3 or something similar for the paint, time and a cup of tea and then the item you want to paint.  

We spent around about 5 hours there creating our pieces.  CBC chose a big pasta bowl, I chose a big lipped bowl and WKWTTG chose a vase.  With inspiration all around, we set off.  It was very therapeutic and totally absorbing. They had loads of stencils, colours, painting tools and we set off.  CBC went for a Meditteranean theme, I chose my old favourite of daisies and WKWTTG went with a lovely graduating landscape and sky effect.   CBC and I also squeezed in a ceramic Christmas decoration each because Faff-boy took so long.  

The excitement and pleasure in our crafts was great!  We were soooooooooo exuberant anticipating picking up the finished product (they fired and varnished it for you) 3 days later, on Christmas eve. 

They had stencils and lots of inspiration around. You had all sorts of paints, stencils and there were tons of items to paint from the cheapest Christmas ornamnents like baubles to larger vases, mugs, bowls, jugs etc. You could book yourself in for a session in order to make presents for people. There are some novelty items like Snowman and things that are aimed at kids but there are lots of genuinely useful items you can paint for people. CBC chose to use pointinism and a paint brush for his bowl, I chose to use paper daisies as negative stencils and WKWTTG used his natural genius! (And the staff in the shop really liked his one!)

I really hope to squeeze in a session when we go up to Northumberland this time as it was really fun. Plus, I then used the skills I'd gained at home with painting a mug for a Blogswap last year, so the workshop definitely helped me with some skills.

And ta da, here were CBC's and my bowls after being varnished, 2 years on! They get lots of use as pasta/soup bowl and fruit bowl respectively