Who knew it could be so much fun

Yesterday evening I joined Rachel, Stuart's Mum, Sister and Aunt for a Create a Plate evening.  I was feeling quite daunted at the thought, as whilst I enjoy crafts I can't draw for toffees. 

Our hostess for the evening was Amanda of Create-a-plate she welcomed us to her quirky home, and what a house.  I have passed it many times and had always wondered who lived there, now I know.  Her husband Wesley supplied us with glasses of mulled wine whilst Amanda told us how our evening would pan out.  We were given a sheet of paper with a plate sized circle drawn on it, we were to draw our design onto this and once happy we would trace it off onto tracing paper, then transfer this to the glaze paper. So far so good.  I had a rough idea of the theme of my plate, and had printed off a few ideas from Clip Art which I showed to Amanda, we discussed what I could do with them and away I went.  Much concentration ensued, lots of rubbing out, sighs and giggles. 

We got to a point where we had a break for dinner and a chance to look around.  Dinner was delicious, Lasagne with dressed salad followed by Plum Crumble and thick cream, yum. 

Aware of the time we headed back to our plates.  Amanda had helped us out with some neat cutting whilst we ate and we were at a point to start laying out our designs onto the plates.  A quick tidy up of all the rubbing outs and a small dish of water was provided for us to soak the glaze paper, once soaked the glaze slides off the backing paper and you are able to transfer to the plate, scary.  I chose to do a knitting sheep, which was quite large and had been chopped into sections so that the limbs would be defined by leaving gaps for the plate to show through.  Once I had the sheep on the plate, I added the sock she was knitting, then went on to decorate the edge of the plate with balls of wool, which Amanda had made cuts into so it looked like strands of wool.  Some fiddly work to get the knitting needles on.  Once everything is in place, you then have to get rid of any air bubbles which means going over the whole thing with a dry cloth - trying not to move everything.

Once done we signed the backs of the plates then cleared the decks so we could view everyones efforts.  I think we were all amazed at what we had achieved.  It was a lovely way to spend an evening, the time went so fast, we didn't leave until 11:15pm.  Our plates are being fired today and will be ready for collection tomorrow.  I'm keen to see the finished article as the true colours will really show up.

Of course I will post some photographs