The art of pottery making combines all of nature's forces: earth, water, fire, and—when used as inspiration for a decorative bust—celebrity weatherman Al Roker. Make elemental art with today's Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of pottery painting at Crackpots in Longmont.
Visitors to Crackpots use their imagination and the shop’s supplies to adorn premade earthenware with glittering glazes and vibrant tableaus, as well as craft intricate mosaics and fused glass pieces. Inside the new 5,400-square-foot workroom, bare vessels ($4–$75; most less than $16) ranging from mugs to piggy banks await colorful coverings and relief from nightmares about public nudity. A studio fee for each painter ($8 for adults; $7 for kids 12 and younger) covers a full day of painting. Friendly staff members fill eager fists with brushes, stencils and stamps, encouraging creativity and offering advice or suggestions if exuberant glaze-slinging turns to frustrated flailing.
Flout realism with exquisite renderings of the mind's eye on a new teapot, stencil recipes onto dinner plates, or discover new designs in the studio's idea books. Over the next five days, ceramicists blanket infant images with a clear glaze, then set them down for naptime in a warm kiln, sending new pottery home fully protected from cracks, fading, and temper-tantrums.