Paint Spots n Dots

Easy Paint Your own Pottery - Spots & Dots 

Pottery items covered in spots and dots are extremely stylish and popular at the moment.  Emma Bridgewater has her Polka Dot design and if you visit the home ware section of any major UK department stores you will see lots of spotty and dotty pottery designs.   

There are several very easy ways of creating similar stylish and effective pottery designs suitable for all ages and abilities.

Finger print spots and dots

Fingers make great spotty pottery and it is something even the youngest child with a bit of help can do.   The only thing you need to do before starting your finger print dots is to make sure is that your fingers are clean and free of any grease.  When you change colours make sure you clean your fingers well. A damp sponge to wipe your fingers on works quite well.   The spots created with your fingers may not be perfectly round but they are unique, stylish and completely personal. 

Round Stickers

Round stickers in various sizes are easy and cheap to buy from any stationers and they can be used to create lovely pottery with white spots on a coloured background.   On completely dry and clean bisque (unpainted, unglazed pottery), stick your round stickers all over the surface of the pottery in a random pattern.  Rub the stickers to make sure they are securely attached to the pottery.  Then paint all the surface area in your chosen colour, this can be done with a paintbrush or sponge.  To get a nice solid even colour at least two coats are recommended.  Once the paint is completely dry peel off the stickers and your pottery is ready for glazing and firing.  If you can’t get manage to lift the stickers at the edge a good tip is to take a pin and stick it in the sticker and lift.

If you want coloured spots on a white background you can use ring binder reinforcement ring stickers, again these are also readily and cheaply available from stationers.  Again stick this all over your pot, but instead of painting the background carefully paint the hole in the middle of the ring binder stickers and then peel the rings off when the paint is dry before glazing and firing.

Stamping your Spots and Dots

Instead of using your fingers at a stamp you can use other round objects by immersing them in paint and dabbing them on your pottery.  Good everyday objects for this include the end of paint brushes, ends of pencils, tops of pens, cotton wool buds or dowelling.  You can also buy various sponge tools called dabbers and daubers in various sizes from craft stores.  What ever you use the object needs to be clean and free from grease for starting each colour.  With the cotton wool buds it is best to use a new one for each colour.

Use Round Objects as Stencils

Using a felt tip pen or soft pencil draw around round objects to create a spotty or circle design on your pottery.  All pencil and felt tip lines will disappear by burning off during the firing process. You can then either paint inside the circles or leave the circles unpainted and paint the background. Areas not painted will go a creamy white when fired, how white the background is will depend on the type of glaze and bisque used.   A good household object for drawing circles is a spaghetti measurer.   These usually have three or four different circle sizes on it for measuring the spaghetti portions.   You can also buy stencils with lots of different
sized circles on from craft stores or stationers.

  

Now you can see how easy to create stylish unique designs with paint your own pottery, why not check out our paint your own pottery painting kits and get painting.