Friday, May 28, 2010

Next Wednesday is the beginning of our summer sessions at Irving. The summer day camps will be starting at the rec. center, so the building will be a lively place with 135 grade school students.

So we will show up in the cool of the evening, Wednesdays, and paint from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., which gets everyone home before dark. We have three sessions of four weeks each; one in June, one in July and one in August. Our daytime sessions will start again on September 1.

In June, we will be using decals on tea and coffee cups. I have piles of decals; everything from windmills to kittens. I also have lots of different flower decals. Then we will paint over the decals and glue glass seed beads on them to accent them. And with the addition of a little potting soil and plant, or with a candle, or with silk flowers, they should make charming little gifts.

Decals can be fired anywhere from 018 to 014. Decals can be full color or just monochromatic. The monochromatic ones can be painted over with regular china paint. We are going to adhere the decals to the china and then we are going to paint on them all in one fire.

The glass beads are glued on with Elmer's glue or any white water-based glue and fired at 016. The little holes disappear at that temperature and adhere to the glaze. The glass beads look like perfect round dots. They can handle being re-fired as well. The beads have to be colored glass, not painted glass beads. So no metallic, opulence or glittery beads. If you glue them in a straight line, then they turn into a solid line of color. Fun!

Decals have been and stilll are considered "cheating" in china painting. It's NOT your own work! But they have a certain place and are fun for these more crafty projects. It is fun to lighten up for summer and to try our hand at something a little different. Come July we will be working on portraits and doing some serious painting.

Last year we slumped wine bottles and made chees trays, also a crafty sort of project, but more on that later.

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