Yesterday my husband and I went to Color Me Mine, a pottery painting studio. It was our second time going there. The first time was just over a week ago. We went for a date night experience. The first visit, there were only two other people in the place. It was calm, you could hear the music and talk with each other.1
Once you finish painting all the layers and colors, you are done, but your piece isn’t. They fire it in a kiln and call you when it’s ready.2 When I got the call about our pieces, unfortunately, John’s piece didn’t fire correctly. It “shivered.” This means that the paint breaks off like little glass shards. They gave us a credit for his piece and we got to go back and start again.
We decided to go back on a Saturday afternoon. The place was packed and they had a waiting list and back-to-back birthday parties.
Anyone who knows me, knows that this is one of my HSP (highly sensitive people) nightmares. But we were here, they had a table and we decided to stay. I already knew what piece I was going to paint. John selected a new mug and decided to change his design.
As we painted we could hear people talking and groups coming and going. We chatted with the grandma and granddaughter sitting next to us and with the little boy who was so excited but had to wait for a table. He was adorable. He told John how nice his mug looked, he told us about his very cool jacket and we shared about painting the pottery with his grandma.
A child behind John threw up. One birthday party group left and another arrived.
I painted my Peace piece, and would disappear into focus needed to paint each letter. I realized that amongst all of the noise and people moving around, I felt calm. I found the well of peace inside of me and was able to relax even in a space that is generally like a nightmare to me. When I would pause to move my body or take a moment before painting another layer of color, I could take in everything around me before going back into my focused painting and peace.
This morning for my gratitude sketchbook page, I drew the PEACE pottery and then wrote about the experience.
“Peace, like joy and happiness and laughter is not found out in the world. It is inside of us. We we feel it, embrace it and live it. We release it into the world and it can expand just like our Universe. We can have peace even when everything around us feels chaotic. Our peace begets more peace.” 3
Do something for you today. Find your inner peace. Maybe you meditate. Allow yourself to really notice what makes meditation feel so good. Maybe you need to run or hike, or smash the pickleball. At some point take time to notice how that makes you feel inside. Feel your peace and when it overflows like bubbles blown in a mug, share the overflow and keep filling your cup. I’d love for your to share your PEACE moments in the comments.
It takes at minimum and hour and for us closer to 2.5 hours to paint our pieces.
This is a video of making the bubble effect on my plate. It’s lots of fun, but takes extra time for each layer to dry. Three solid coats as the base and then three coats of bubbles and I added the smiley face and words after that. Worth every minute for the end result.
For my gratitude, delights, happiness sketchbook, I make notes of gratitudes, delights, and happiness on the left page and then make a drawing on the right page. I do the art the next day and date it for the day it happened. I tried making the art in the evening, but I was too tired and am not at my most creative. Some entries are just quick sketches with no color and others are filled with color and can take over an hour to make. There’s no wrong way to make a sketchbook entry except not to make the entry.