Handmade plates

For my daughter Ada’s birthday, she asked to do a pottery project as part of her 5th birthday celebration. We brainstormed ideas for a while. We weren’t going to be able to do a hands on / wet clay project this year. So we decided to do kid drawings on plates.

I made a 7″ circle on paper as their template for their plate designs. They had pencils, thick Sharpies and thin Sharpies and all dove into drawing quite quickly. I love the confidence and lack of inhibitions they had when they did their drawings. I know at some point in time, most kids become more self conscious with their art. I’m trying to preserve that confidence that my kids have for as long as possible. I turned the images into decals and applied them to the plates and fired them onto plates glazed in the colors that the kids picked out.

They turned out great. It was a fun collaboration with Ada and her friends. I love that there is a big group of kids eating their meals off of handmade plates that they decorated!

Here is the collection of each of the kids’ finished plates. You can click on any of them to see them larger.