Fire Pottery in an Oven at Home

Decorating your own ceramics is a fun craft for all ages. And now it is easy to fire pottery in an oven. This is a great way to make a gift, or pottery item as part of your homeschooling.

Pottery Painting

Although it isn't possible to fire pottery clay in an oven at home, it is possible to oven bake ceramics decorated and painted with special paint.

For this craft you must start with pottery that is already glazed . This gives you a wide choice of things you can paint - almost all the pottery you buy in shops is already glazed (it has a shiny glass-like surface). We usually buy cheap white glass plates to decorate but you can find lots of different items that would work well.

To bake in the oven you need to use Pebeo Porcelain 150 paints. These are non-toxic paints (so safe for the children to use). They come in lots of colors and in paint format or marker format. When they have set you bake them in the oven to 'fix' them. You first need to dry the paint for 24 hours, then bake for 35 minutes at 150°C (300°F) in your oven.

The paint is not supposed to be on areas that will come into contact with food - but we do use ours on the plate rims and the outside of cups. Or for plates that are just decorative. Once fired, the china is dishwasher safe.

I have also found a paint called Marabu Porcelain Ceramic Paint that requires no baking - but haven't had a chance to try this yet.

Stockists

Plain white china can be bought almost anywhere. Amazon.com do a nice white dinner set for example, or something more unusual, try this cow shaped butter dish.

The paints are also available on Amazon.com but they were cheaper at dickblick for example, so it is worth shopping around.

In the UK, you can buy the paints at Amazon - but Hayley sent me a link to BudgetBisque that not only stock the paints but can provide you with a whole range of interesting pottery to paint too. Opitec also sell some plain ceramics for decorating.

Homeschooling Ideas

As well as making gifts and keepsakes, here are some ways to incorporate this into your homeschool projects!

• Paint a vase in the style of greek vase - or other ancient designs.
• Study ceramic painting from a particular country or culture (eg. Mexican or Native American) and design your own version.
• Paint tiles to make a large mural about your subject - or in the style of a famous artist.

I hope that gives you some great ideas for trying this great craft!

Teenagers could spend a lot of time on the design and painting of a ceramic piece.

Why not go to a museum or art gallery to collect ideas - or pick a painting style to copy? Perhaps a PopArt piece would appeal, for example.

Painted by Linda Harker

To take this further with teenagers, how about also learning to fire clay at home? This is for the more adventurous but there are three different ways your could try it!

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