My kitchen canisters

by thebigscott Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:06 pm

Last night the kids made pizza dough from scratch. But when Caly was getting more flour from the canister, Quinn came up behind her and startled her. The canister knocked over, rolled off the edge of the counter, and broke when it hit the floor. I'd already decided that if I ever saw some canisters that I liked better I was going to donate the set I had to goodwill. The ones I had were pretty, but they had a lot of little ridges that seemed to catch dust and food residue. They're right next to the stove so anytime I cooked anything greasy I'd have to spend 15 minutes wiping them down. Long story short, I'm not sorry that one of them broke.

But, when I went shopping I couldn't find any that I liked any better. Then inspiration hit. Caly and I went down to the local ceramics shop and asked if they had any canisters we could glaze ourselves. This way I can make them any color I want. Sure enough they had a variety and I found some I liked. The lady who runs it is a friend and she's going to cast me a set of four of the largest size rather than have them decrease in size like most sets. After all, a bag of flour and a bag of sugar are both the same size, right? I actually only have room on my counter for 3, but I know how things like this go in our house so I want to do 4 in case one is broken.

So, all this will take a while. She's going to cast them from the mold this week, so I should be able to paint them next week. Then they'll have to be fired in the kiln. But since this is a small shop, she can't guarantee that she'll have enough people making pieces to fill up the kiln on any particular day. It would eat up all her profits to fire individually so I may have to wait another week or two for her to fire them. But... a month from now I will be the proud owner of a set of canisters that I painted myself.

My kitchen is that green from the 50's. You know, the color of a granny smith apple. I'm thinking I'll paint them yellow with a few different shades of blue scattered around. And I already know I want to have the kids dip their fingers in dark blue and handle them. I have a plate I made when Zoe was about 9 months old that has her little fingerprints all along one edge where she kept trying to grab it while I was painting. I want to do that on these ones.