I am in the process of bringing in a new line of glaze and have been testing new colors to see if they are compatible with my current colors. During a recent round of testing, I decided to paint a salsa bowl, as one can never have too many salsa bowls. My salsa bowl was actually a drip tray from a flower pot set that was rescued from my “discard” box, because it had a small chip in it. Nothing that a few coats of paint wouldn’t cover.
After painting the salsa bowl with the new colors, I decided it needed a little more pizzazz, but I was pressed for time. What could I do quickly that would look good? A stamp would be perfect! After some consideration, I chose one of my cute frog stamps, even though it was not a particularly good stamp to use with glaze. I sponged a bit of Java Bean (yes, it looks as yummy as it sounds) on the stamp and stamped away. One-two-three- lift! Ugh! It looked nothing like a frog. It was basically a brown blob.
Now what? I couldn’t leave the sorry looking blob frog at the bottom of my salsa bowl. So I decided to have some fun and get creative. I grabbed the sponge, dipped it back into the Java Bean and sponged over what was left of the frog. Then I created a flower outline using the Sgraffito technique; a technique in which layers of color are applied to the bisque (pottery) then lightly scraped away to create an outline. In this case, I lightly scraped some of the brown to reveal the blue underneath. For the finishing touch, I added some splashes of Sour Apple.
The results? The colors are very happily cohabitating with each other and I love my new piece! Time for some chips and salsa…
