Iris & Dora has long been a favourite place for my girls as they love pottery painting, but today we went for something different…using the potters wheel, and as Tilly doesn’t like being messy, whereas Lottie relishes everything messy, I wasn’t sure how it would go!
Getting started
We were greeted by a very helpful young lady who led us into the pottery studio in the side room, and my girls’ excitement hit a new level when they saw the rows of pottery wheels and tables set up with paints.
Usually I don’t get involved when we visit Iris & Dora, but I got somewhat cajoled into trying the potters wheel too and soon found myself putting on an apron with my girls and wishing I had worn more appropriate old clothes!
Once our clothes were suitably covered, we chose a wheel and were given a few instructions from Denise (the owner of Iris & Dora) about how to make the wheel turn and stop. After a few tries, we were given a lump of clay and told to mould it into a ball and then throw it onto the centre of the wheel to make it stick. Lottie does not need asking twice to hurl something messy, so this was right up her street from the start. Tilly, on the other hand, was more tentative as she doesn’t like her hands being messy, however, Denise was very encouraging and told her that it is the same clay used in face masks, and that she would have lovely soft hands at the end, this seemed to make Tilly relax, and I was surprised how quickly she got into it.
Shaping a bowl
Now came the technical bit, and thankfully Denise was on hand to help. We had to put the wheel on full speed then Denise moulded the clay into a dome shape (if you do the pottery wheel course you are shown how to centre the clay, we only had 10 minutes and you needed far longer than that to master it), we then had to put our thumb down the middle of the dome to make it into a bowl shape (it got wider and higher up the sides). I can’t believe that of the 3 of us, mine was the only one that flew off the wheel. I was literally useless! Much to my girls’ amusement, I couldn’t get my clay to stay on the wheel, thankfully Denise rescued me and got it secure, so I could mould it into a rather crooked bowl shape.
You had to keep adding water to your hands so your hands got covered in wet clay but both my girls absolutely loved it. Lottie would literally have sat there for hours and was upset when her bowl was finished and she needed to move onto the next stage. Denise helped get the bowls off the wheel then we had to wash our hands and get onto the drying stage.
Drying the clay
Now it was time to dry the clay using a hair dryer! My girls loved blasting the clay with the hair dryers and were helped mop up some of the water from inside the bowls. The drying took about 5 minutes and made the bowls much more stable. They weren’t completely dry as we had the chance to add texture to our bowl using a whole host of letters/shapes/rollers etc. This is where I realised my imagination is somewhat lacking!
Once we had finished the texture (both girls wrote their name on their bowls, Lottie printed hers upside down but crisis was averted when Denise showed her how to smooth the clay and try it again), it was time to dry them again and this time Tilly and Lottie went for a faster approach!…
Painting time
We set our dry bowls down on a table which had a selection of paints already poured out and lots of brushes. Tilly instantly saw that there was no pink, and as she had a very fixed idea about how she was going to paint her bowl (the purple was not going to cut it as a substitute), Denise was great and got her a lovely baby pink and we were ready to get started.
The painting stage did take a while as we had to do 3 coats of every colour as we were using acrylic paints. You need to layer the paint to give a depth of colour once it has been fired. We enjoyed all chatting and listening to the Disney tunes that were playing and I tried to ignore the ‘feedback’ I was given from my girls about how plain my colour choices were!
All done!
It took us about 1.5hours from start to finish to create our bowls, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it, to the point my girls didn’t want to leave and wanted to go into the main studio to paint more pottery afterwards! Our session was a Pottery Wheel Taster for adults and children and cost £22 per person, and it’s just one of the sessions available during school holidays but also during term-time. Due to the thickness of the base of the pots it will take 6-8 weeks for them to be fired and ready to collect, and we were made aware of this at the time of booking.
Lots more on offer...
For those that haven’t been to Iris & Dora before it really is worth a visit, with a huge selection of pottery ready to paint, lots of craft courses on offer and a lovely little shop at the entrance offering homemade crafts from jewellery to prints. And the thing I like most, is that the emphasis is on enjoying creating something, not about perfection, as a mum of a child that sets way too high standards for herself and gets upset when things are not as she consider ‘perfect’, I showed her this image on the wall in the studio, and she read it and smiled…
Thanks Iris & Dora, we’ll be back! For more information about everything on offer at Iris & Dora visit irisanddora.gg
