I’ve got a newborn son and so as well as taking hundreds of photos of him, my thoughts are turning to keepsakes. I was really keen to get a little tile of his painted footprints and so, as one of our first outings, we headed to The Pottery Place in Witney.
There are a few pottery painting places around, but we were swayed by Witney’s free and easy parking – possibly the world’s most boring reason, but we’re out of practice when it comes to newborn outings and wanted to make it as simple as possible!
And I’m so glad because The Pottery Place turned out to be a total delight. The shop itself is decorated to perfection – cute and colourful, with loads of very pretty painted pottery everywhere. The staff were friendly and welcoming and showed us the many options. If I had a creative bone in my body I would have been tempted to do something more ambitious, but as it is we chose a few simple tiles – one for us and one for each of the grandparents.
We settled ourselves upstairs and once we were sorted post-feed and nappy change, with a tea and a coffee (served in beautifully painted crockery), one of the ‘artists’ came to help us. She carefully painted his feet, printed them and very gently wiped them clean. She then took a note of the writing we wanted to put on it, which she would add later for a few extra pounds.
So really, she did it all for us! This suited us down to the ground, but for any arty parents out there, you could do it yourself. The place is packed with inspiration and there are loads of different paint colours and paintbrushes, sponges, dobbers and pens.
The Pottery Place is very baby and child friendly. There’s a big tub of toys for them to play with, a changing mat in the toilet, and the tea and coffee were very decently-sized (caffeine is important). The staff also just totally got that you can’t rush a baby and were very happy for us to take our time, making it a stress-free experience.
Not only this, but they have a great deal where you get a free footprints tile if you go in with your baby before he or she is six weeks old. We didn’t know about that before we went so were pretty pleased as it’s what we were after anyway!
The tiles will be ready to collect in a week and I can’t wait to see them. I highly recommend The Pottery Place for all your pottery painting needs. You can also go there to make mosaics, decoupage and block printing, and they do parties and run workshops for adults as well as for school-age kids in the holidays.
https://www.thepotteryplace.co.uk/
June 2018
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