Bella Joy Pottery Blog

Why rainbows? I'll tell you. In the fall of 2015, I was working hard making pottery for Christmas. One afternoon for fun, I made three little test pieces, each hand thrown on the wheel. I gave one to my mom and kept one. They started like the plate below, just a little hint of rainbow with more areas of color.  I loved them! It was my whole color palette on one piece? Yes please! They were so fun and fresh. My excitement over the rainbow pots was palpable. I think it was contagious even, people really enjoyed the rainbows, and...

My old studio used to be in a chicken coop, sans the chickens. I loved it! It was old and quaint, and I even loved the old musty smell. To this day, I keep a photo of the chicken coop on my desk at the new studio. It makes sense that one of my first designs were chicken and rooster mugs. The problem was I didn't have the chicken and rooster as models and so the original chickens and roosters started off more like ducks. My best friend bought me a book on how to draw birds and my chickens and roosters, which...

How Bella Joy Pottery Started The summer between first grade and second grade we moved. That fall I started going to St. Margaret's, a small Catholic school, in Otsego, MI. One day, Mrs. She-who-shall-not-be-named, came into the classroom carrying these weird long boxes. She explained to us that these boxes contained 20 candy bars that we needed to schlep around and sell. Ok, great. I didn't want to sell a box of candy bars! But then something magical happened, she took out the prize catalog. Depending on how many candy bars we sold we could get a prize! Sign me up!...