Child's clay pottery pieces

Happy Valentine's Day! I am linking this week to one of my favorite link parties, Suzanne's Vintage Thingie Thursday. I love browsing through all the treasures! 


One day - let's call it 10 years ago - while digging through the bins of loose junk at a thrift store, I spied a little piece of glazed, molded clay. I pulled it out of the bin and quickly realized: it was a small clay "monster," obviously made by a child.

Call it PMS, but I got pretty emotional thinking that someone’s mother had likely died and their child’s handmade art got donated to the thrift store. 

Needless to say, my soft collector's heart fell in love with this little guy. So I took him home, and for the next several years I picked up "clay projects" with surprising frequency - to the point where I had a pretty impressive collection of orphaned childs' pottery. 

I actually re-donated many of these pieces after I pulled them from storage following the flood in 2008 that took our house. But I've kept the Monster Guy, and a few other favorite pieces, and thought I was done with this phase of my collecting. 
Until about two weeks ago, when I happened upon this hefty heart dish at the Goodwill. 

My daughter spied it first, pointed it out, and I actually said, "Oh, it's really nice but I don't buy clay projects anymore."  

"Are you sure?" she asked. "It's pretty big, and it's only 99 cents." At that point I took it from her and began to inspect it. It was covered in little stamped markings, probably using similar tools that made the "teeth" of Monster Guy. 

Even with the pretty red and yellow sides, and the generous size, I was going to put it back until I turned it over and read the writing on the back: 

"To: Samtha Samantha, From: Kyle with love"
Someone please tell me I'm not the only one who gets emotional over these things...