We were digging through some boxes of memorabilia recently, looking for my high-school diploma (so I could mail a copy to our county school superintendent and prove that I’m qualified to homeschool my daughter). I had not looked through most of that stuff since I put it away in the boxes, probably seven or eight years ago. Do you ever do that, bring the boxes up from the basement or down from the closet shelf and go through them, just to see what you deemed worthy of storing carefully away? It’s a trip, man.

Among other things, I had stored a piano jewelry/music box that my grandparents gave me when I was about Annalie’s age and an old toy that belonged to me and my brother when we were little, a wind-up “radio” that plays Hickory-Dickory Dock. I pulled them out and gave them to Annalie to play with, and she carried them both around all day. At one point she took a snack and lemonade with her out to the deck and sat out there chilling to her tunes for about 20 minutes. I couldn’t help but laugh, because it was for that very reason that I kept all these things: so someday I could share them to my kids.

Some of the other stuff I had packed neatly away were the photo of my graduating class from Omaha North High; Minnie Mouse ears from Disneyland with my name embroidered on the back; old trophies from bowling leagues, summer music olympics, and spelling bees; an old blankie, soft with age; 45s that I used to play on my Fisher-Price record player—Neil Diamond, the theme from Greatest American Hero, and of course Billy Bob and the Rockafire Explosion (Showbiz Pizza’s animatronic band); the tooth fairy pillow my mom made for me when I started losing teeth; and an unopened bottle of Crystal Pepsi.

Yeah, I said Crystal Pepsi. Anyone remember that? Some of you reading were probably barely in kindergarten when it was around in the early 90s. I rather liked the stuff; as I recall it tasted vaguely cinnamon-y. I don’t know exactly why I saved a bottle of it. Maybe when they stopped making it I just thought it would be cool to keep one for posterity.

Probably the best thing I came across, though, was a stash of old notes from my friend Erin. This note starts out, “Dearest Bethany, I love this pen. This pen belongs to Eboni X. Carter. This pen is awesome as is Eboni…” That’s pretty typical of the notes Erin used to (and still does!) write me. I had fun reading all these old notes and cracking up at how goofy we were in high school, and how little we’ve changed since then.

All the pins in that photo used to live on my bedroom curtains, along with a dozen more that I didn’t deem worthy of keeping. The Russian pins at the top left and the bottom middle are from Russian students who did an exchange with our high school every year. My high school’s sister school was in Pskov, Russia, and students from our school would go to Pskov for a month and attend school with host students, and then later the Russian students would come to Omaha and attend our school. Too bad I didn’t start taking Russian till I was a junior, because only 3rd- and 4th-year students (like Katrina) got to do the exchange program. The Little Mermaid pin was a gift from Erin on my 16th birthday, because I was very into The Little Mermaid back then. The other pins are from old jobs (Children’s Museum and Library Page), my high school (V-Up, North Vikings!) and the Omaha zoo. The stripey rock is just a pretty rock I found by the Missouri River in Dodge Park one day. I gave that to Annalie, too, for her rock collection.

We never did find my high-school diploma. I guess I’ll have to call my high school and see if they can send me a copy. But I don’t really care, because we had fun looking for it!

Have you always wondered how I get my dots so perfectly round? How I came up with that intersecting-circles-of-dots pattern? How you might be able to duplicate that pattern on a piece you are painting? Well, look no further! I’ll tell you how. Better than that, I’ll show you how with lots and lots of photos, most of them taken by my partner in crime painting, Brenda. (You can tell from the length of my hair and my non-pregnant state that these photos were taken a while back…almost a year ago! I guess I’ve been busy writing about other stuff since then.)

Step 1: Go to Starbucks. Purchase caffeinated drink of your choice. I guess this step is optional but I rarely skip it.

At the pottery studio, browse the shelves until you see a piece that is just crying out for dots. I usually dot mugs and bowls…

…but I’ve dotted spoon rests, butter crocks, a few Christmas ornaments, a teapot, a wee play teaset, and plenty of plates. I find that plates and mugs are the easiest things to dot, though. Which is why I chose a cute little rounded mug to dot for you.

Once you choose your piece, next you need to decide what colors you want to paint with. Sometimes I walk into the studio knowing exactly what colors I want to use, but usually I dither over the paint selection forever before I decide on a combination I like.

On this day, I went for a bright rainbow of colors, minus red because there only happened to be five wells in the palette I was using. Also, I find that five colors is about right for “actually dottery.” Note that you don’t need much paint to dot with; a teaspoon or so of each color is more than enough to cover a regular-sized mug.

Okay! We’ve got our blank mug, our paint palette, and five paintbrushes. I don’t always use one brush for each color; the way I dot it’s possible to use one brush and just wipe off the paint each time you switch colors. But this day I decided to use one brush for each color.

Now we pick up our paintbrush, and…are you ready for this? It’s the big secret to painting dots…

…turn the paintbrush over. That’s it! When I paint dots, I use the wrong end of the paintbrush. (Make sure you’re using brushes that have a rounded end, not the sliced-off-slanted ends that you will find on many paintbrushes so they can be used for scraping paint.) You can also use cotton swabs, toothpicks, or your own fingers, depending on what kind of dots you want, but I almost always use the wrong end of a paintbrush. It’s that simple.

To recap: for dottery, this is wrong. You do not use the bristle end of the paintbrush.

You use this end. Okay, I think I’ve made that pretty clear. Now, we’re ready to paint!

We dip the paintbrush, wrong-end first, into the first paint color, annnnnd…

Dot! One dot, right where you want the center of your first circle to be. This is not a science, it’s an art, so where you want that circle to be is totally up to you.

Then pick up the next brush, dip it in the next color, and just make a circle of dots around that first dot. It’s okay if your dots aren’t all the same size—again, art not science. Move on to the next brush and the next color, add another ring of dots around the first two. We’ve made a good start.

Whew. This painting stuff is hard work.

What I need is a refreshing sip of my iced latte. Ahh, that’s better. Now where was I?

Right! Painting. I have no idea what’s going on with those two behind me and that ceramic skull, though.

But who cares about those shenanigans, because I’ve finished my first circle! Usually when I’m dotting, I use each color once, and then I do the last ring in the same color as the center dot. That’s a personal choice, and I don’t even consider it a hard-and-fast rule. I just think it looks complete that way.

It was at this point that Brenda got a little bored watching me paint dozens of dots, so she got up and wandered around the shop for a minute. She took this photo of some mugs and a plate that always cracked me up: it’s a heart-shaped plate painted with an octopus, a rainbow, and a couple of phrases in French, including “Je t’aime.” Sure. Why not?

While Brenda was taking pictures of octopus-rainbow plates, I kept dotting away. Once I finished my first circle, I picked a different color for the center dot of my next circle, decided where I wanted the center to be, and started on that one. I use the colors in the same order for each circle because I find that’s less confusing for me personally. If the circles start to run into each other, I just imagine that one circle is underneath the other, and I leave off the dots where they overlap. Does that make sense?

As the mug fills up with dots, I pause in my painting to look at the mug. Are there any spots that seem blank? If so, I might add another circle of dots there. If it’s a small space, sometimes I place the center dot right on the edge of the mug, and end up with only a semi-circle of dots. Or I try to make the dots, and thus the circle, smaller by very lightly touching the surface of the mug with the paint instead of pressing the paintbrush down.

Ah, dottery makes me happy. Can you tell? It really is a very relaxing type of painting to do, once you get into it.

Too bad for Brenda that dottery is kinda boring to watch. Nah, just kidding! This photo was totally staged. After all, Brenda was keeping busy taking pictures. And we were laughing our heads off and having a great time being silly.

Ooh, I’m concentrating hard, now. Must be getting close to done.

Hmm, what’s this? I’m pretty sure that I was pointing at some kind of mistake here, but I don’t remember for sure and I can’t see the mistake. Which just proves the point I was trying to make, that it’s okay to mess up a little in dottery. No one will notice anyway.

All done with the dots! In this photo you can see what I was talking about before, how when circles run into each other I just imagine they’re overlapping and leave off the dots of the parts that overlap. You can see that when I added that ring of orange dots, I ran into the purple dots on the right and the blue dots on the left. And on the lower-left circle, the yellow ring ran into the orange ring of the center circle.

I like to paint little phrases on my dottery. Usually I paint a very small “be happy” somewhere along the edge of a circle. In order to do that, I need a decent tiny paintbrush, so I whip out my trusty paintbrush kit.

The fabric case I use to store my paintbrushes was actually made to store crochet hooks. It’s not the best material for storing paintbrushes, because the bristles rub against the fabric and can get bent and frayed. My paintbrushes are fairly inexpensive, though, so it’s not a big deal if one of them wears out faster than it should. This case has worked pretty well for me for the past year and a half, and it’s small enough that I can carry my paintbrushes in my purse all the time. It’s really annoying to go paint, to need a decent tiny brush, and not have your paintbrushes with me.

Most of my paintbrushes were purchased at Michaels. I bought a couple at an art-supply store and at least one of them came from Wal-Mart. I think the most expensive brush I own cost less than $3. They all have been a worthwhile investment for me. Why?

Because painting tiny words is fun! I love doing it, and regularly offer to paint words for other people if they don’t want to do it themselves. I also loved making posters when I was an RA in college.

Most pottery-painting studios do have tiny paintbrushes, but they generally are pretty crappy and hard to paint with because the bristles stick off in five different directions. That’s exactly what you don’t want when you’re trying to paint a fine line.

See the difference?

I often like to paint a little something on the inside of my mugs, just for fun. And guess what? It’s much easier to dot the inside bottom of a mug than it is to paint there. So I added a little circle of dots.

Then I painted my name and the date on the bottom of the mug, which I do with all my pottery. And Ta-daa! Done. All that’s left is for you to pay for your piece, leave it to be fired, and come back and pick it up. Then you get to show it off to everyone and let them marvel at what a great job you did painting such a gorgeous piece of pottery.

I hope some of you find this tutorial helpful, and that you all have as much fun creating your dottery as I do mine!

Remember my post on how Brenda and I painted flower t-shirts using freezer-paper stencils for party favors for Annalie’s 5th birthday? That post is being featured today in the InsideBayArea’s Kids Crafts Column, aPARENTly Speaking!