Dancing Brush Creative Art Studio

My kiddos and I were headed to Gig Harbor to paint pottery at our favorite place when we found out that there was a huge backup on the freeway. Still wanting to stick with the plan, we headed back the other direction to visit Dancing Brush. I went here with my oldest kiddo years ago and I couldn’t remember why I didn’t really care for this place. When we walked in and they started talking about sitting fees I remembered the main reason… ouch, the price. We had fun, painted our pieces, cleaned up, handed our pieces over, paid (3 mugs= about $ 75!), and picked up our pieces a week later. The pickup process consists of someone behind the desk pointing you in the direction of the window the pottery is sitting in. You will be retrieving your pieces without assistance and none of your pieces will be sitting together, so you need to dig though and find them. Then you bring them up to the counter where they wrap it. When I got home I looked a little closer at the pieces. Another thing I remembered about a previous mug we painted here was that the glaze lasted about 2 years before cracking inside the mug and making it unusable (on the bright side I just turned it into a pot with a cute succulent planted in it). This time, each of my mugs seemed to have at least one bubble in the glaze. I’m not going to pretend I know a whole lot about glazing pottery, but I’ve never seen my pieces returned with bubbles when I get them back from my favorite place. All in all, we had fun. However, the price and quality remind me that this place won’t be our first choice.

I’ve been a customer for many years, visiting from out of state several times a year. Dancing brush is always on the agenda for my visits. I use it to commemorate important events in our family, so it scratches both my creative itch and a family history function. Dancing brush is the creative arts studio for me that sets the standard for all the studios I have used, and there are several. The environment has been thoughtfully created to encourage your creativity — it is colorful and fun, the music is uplifting, and the place is filled with great examples of different techniques and ideas of how to decorate the bisque ware they sell. There are tons of tools, templates, paints, brushes, stamps, wax resist — you name it, they probably have the what you need. The staff is skilled in guiding you through the process, today I watched them coax my mom into a creative excursion to make a mug for my uncle that she wanted to take, but was too intimidated to start. They helped her identify easy ways to accomplish the design she wanted to achieve. Be aware that you will have a great time here, but it isn’t a cheap activity. You pay the price of the piece which includes the firing, plus a 10 dollar studio fee good for 7 days that includes all your materials, creative advice, and a magic pickup fairy to clean up your mess after you. In my case it costs to ship the piece home too, but if this activity is in your price point at all, this is the best place anywhere across the country that I have visited to do it.

We love dancing brush… from just going out with a friend to full on birthday parties they are fantastic. Well priced and wide variety. Love this place.

A great place to meet with friends and create something beautiful. Nice atmosphere and plenty of great supplies. I intend to go more often and make Christmas presents this year.

Great new little space in Ballard to spend time being creative with my little guy. Well organized, super friendly and helpful staff, and multiple project friendly pricing! We will be back for sure.

I really like to bring my daughter here on rainy afternoons. The studio is super cute, really inspiring, and they have great stuff to choose from to paint. The only thing that keeps me from coming more often is the fact that I have to pay to sit with my daughter while she paints, even if I don’t touch a paintbrush. The fee for both of us, plus the cost of the ceramic (which is very high for the size of the pieces, in my opinion), makes this a very expensive activity. It’s especially frustrating when she paints her piece in well-​under an hour and I’ve already had to pay nearly $ 20 for an entire day’s worth of studio time. It’s fun, but insanely overpriced.

We love Dancing Brush. Ceramic painting stores are far and few. I’ve always found the staff to be helpful. They have all sorts of ceramic objects to paint. There are many options to help you get started: stamps, pictures, and lots of ceramic examples. They keep a full set of all the colors available at your table. The only disappointment is the finished glaze doesn’t last as long as we’d hoped.

While the experience of designing and painting pottery was fun for our kids (hence the two stars) albeit a bit on the expensive side, the customer service when I went to pick up the finished pieces was extremely disappointing — after having been told to stand aside while the transactions of other customers (who actually were behind us in the queue but they were paying, not picking up) were processed, I was told that I would have to find the finished pieces that were squirreled away somewhere in the store.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t there when the pieces were created (I was picking them up as an errand) and had no idea what to look for. The cashier was not very sympathetic and just pointed me in a general direction — as I was pressed for time and hadn’t planned on participating in an impromptu scavenger hunt, I left empty handed.
While the store wasn’t particularly busy, it isn’t so much that I wasn’t able to pick up the finished pieces as it was the attitude of the cashier. Apparently, once you have paid for your artwork, you are a persona non grata.