Pottery wheel practice

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My daughter, my niece and I put the pottery wheel my daughter bought back in November to use recently. It was fun, but not as easy as I thought it would be.

Going into our afternoon of pottery making, I foolishly thought my daughter and niece would each be able to create their own cup. But I realized after the first 10 minutes of trying to shape the first project that we would have time for only one.

Also, the instructions were not as clear as I think they could've been. It would've been nice if they had a diagram noting what each piece was called, and I just wasn't understanding based on the instructions when it would be OK to remove the cup from the encasement.

So, our first effort was mostly a trial-and-error project. We didn't bother to smooth out rough edges because I just wanted to test how long it would take the clay to dry and whether it would be OK to wait until it was entirely dry before removing it from the encasement. In short, it's not pretty, but I feel more confident about what to do next time.

Here's how our first project turned out:

child pottery wheel project
A cup made with My First Pottery wheel. My daughter, who
couldn't keep her hands off of it once I took it out of the
encasement, caused the large chip at the top on the left.

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