Hey. Hey.
I finally got my glass piece back from Pottery Camp! Which is why I am now ready to talk about my experience at this new to me establishment. Little background: Back in the middle of April my mother and I began thinking up some ideas on how to treat my grandmother for her birthday. My mom always talks about how Charlotte has so many great places to visit and how she feels like Fayetteville is still lacking in the ‘things to do’ department. As always I took to Groupon. It’s the easiest place for me to find different things to get into plus getting it at a deal. Within 20 minutes I discovered Pottery Camp, a little ways outside from Raleigh, and a current deal they had. It’s always a deal for either one person or two people, never for a small group of three. We ended up purchasing two different packages to cover the costs between the three of us, and finalized some other events for the day to celebrate my grandmothers birthday.
What is Pottery Camp?
Pottery Camp is a fun relaxing place to create something special for yourself or another. You pick the art piece. You choose the colors and design. You relax, take your time, and let the creativity flow. They glaze and fire the special piece you’ve created, and you come back in 5-7 business days or they mail it to you for an extra fee. Sounds a lot like when I went to Meg-Art Pottery doesn’t it? The only twist here is that Pottery Camp has both a pottery section but also a glass section where you can make glass art, which is what we were going for.
We’re Actually Here Now
We arrived at Pottery Camp on Sunday, April 28th sometime in the early afternoon. Our attendant for the next hour and a half Kindly explained how everything worked.
First thing is to decide what type of glass piece you‘re going for. This will determine how big or small of a glass sheet that you’ll need. Our attendant showed us several different options so it was hard to choose from. Not to mention the class package we paid for didn’t include some of the larger pieces that they have available. My grandmother and I settled on sun catchers, where they add hooks for us in order to hang in a window. My mom chose a votive, which they melted and shaped into this sort of bowl with four corners sticking up. We all chose clear backgrounds, but we had the option of doing white or black backgrounds as well.
Next up, the attendant showed us the tools we’d be working with. If you wanted to use larger glass pieces but you wanted to make them into smaller pieces there were two tools available for you. The first tool was used to draw a line down a glass piece or even a sharp curve. It weakened the glass and allowed you to use the second tool which actually broke the glass roughly along the line you created. It wasn’t a perfect ordeal but you could see how both tools were helpful.
In addition to the larger glass pieces, there were smaller almost sprinkle-like glass pieces — this was glass that had been grounded down and you would take this small scooper to get the glass out and slowly place it down on the glass how you desired. With the grinded glass you had to be more careful because that meant that one small move would move all the glass and mess up the shape you were going for. The best way to prevent this was to use hairspray. You’d spray the surface of your background piece and then place the glass down where you wanted and it would hopefully stick until they could melt it all down into one piece. The larger pieces you could just use regular school glue to keep it in position.
I chose to work with the larger pieces and used the grinder glass pieces latter to fill in my tree leaves and the grass at the bottom of my picture. My mom did something similar but unlike me, where I filled in my whole picture, my mom made butterfly’s and added glass in a more abstract concept. My grandmother worked on a really big butterfly using only the small grinder up glass pieces; her preference was to not use the cutting tools we were shown earlier. The attendant was actually nice enough to find traceable like images of the butterfly’s they wanted to use and she printed it off for them. Since we were using clear glass backgrounda it was easy because all they had to do was place the paper underneath the glass and use it to trace out their image in glass.
Of course we weren’t the only people in the shop. There were other adult couples and eventually some kids started coming in as we were finishing up. Music played in the background and our attendant left us alone unless we needed her. We just spent the time passing working on our glass pieces and chatting up amongst the three of us. A nice bonding activity.
After we finished, we told the woman we wanted to have the pieces mailed to my mom and it only cost us an extra $12 to send them. Sidenote: I ended up having to call them about our glass pieces a month later because we still hand’t received them. The workers were very nice and located our creative work within 24 hours and had it shipped out the same day to arrive in the next few days. That was honestly the only annoying thing, but hopefully not a common thing with them.
Remember the finger painting, drawing, snowmen building, tree forts, and everything else? The only difference between then and now is that back then you allowed yourself to just play. There was no plan, no set goals, just an idea and the freedom to make whatever you wanted.
Give yourself room to play. Just do it. I promise you won't regret it.
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