Owner: Julie Vaughan Roberts (Jules)

Business: Cwtch Ceramics - Paint Your Own Pottery Café and Gift Shop

Location: Ty Pawb, Market Street, Wrexham

Phone: 07980 625750.

Email / website: cwtchceramics@gmail.com / www.cwtchceramics.co.uk

Opening hours: Monday 10am-4pm, Tuesday and Wednesday closed, Thursday 10am-7pm, Friday 10am-3pm and 5pm-9.30pm, Sunday 10.30am-4pm

When did you open and why? I opened in January 2019. My passion is pottery - making it, glazing it and kiln firing it.

Kiln openings are like Christmas to me, always full of surprises. I travel to Stoke to buy my clay supplies and quite often have taken my granddaughter Paige with me. The suppliers also have a large stock of slip cast ceramic models which my granddaughter loved to paint with glaze and I would kiln fire. My other grandchildren Olivia and Finlay also like to paint the slip cast ceramics, as do their friends and it just grew from there.

My children encouraged me to look into opening a ceramic workshop and I held a few ceramic painting pop up events at my son's shop in Ty Pawb. As the pop up events became more popular I needed to have more space, so was able to use an empty unit in Ty Pawb.

Why did you open in this location? Ty Pawb is an ideal place for my type of business, as it promotes all types of art and creativity as well as having a fabulous and welcoming community.

It is possible to spend the whole day at Ty Pawb, enjoying the food courts and various functions and activities on offer in the building, from Cwtch Ceramics and other traders. More and more customers are finding the facility a asset to the town, plus the parking is very handy, reasonable and safe. For Cwtch Ceramics and its customers, it's an ideal location.

Tell us about your business/what do you sell? We are a ceramic/pottery painting studio, café and gift shop.

Customers come to us to paint ceramic ornaments, keepsakes and tableware. All ceramics are painted with our non toxic glazes and are then kiln fired and ready for collection a few days later.

The ceramics painted make fabulous gifts for family and friends, we also make clay baby hand and foot imprint keepsakes, as well as keepsake plates, mugs, bowls and our very popular Christmas decorations and baubles.

We started to introduce pottery painting birthday parties, which we hold in our specially decorated party room. We also hold hen nights, baby showers, gender reveals and family get togethers.

We regularly hold special clay hand building evenings, our most recent being a Christmas decoration event. One of our most popular events is our Paint & Prosecco evening, which is held every Friday night 7pm-9:30pm and is a lovely way to relax with friends.

What's your most memorable/proudest moment in business? We have many memorable moments, especially when the children come to pick up the ceramics they have painted and their eyes light up when they see their creation after it has been kiln fired. It's an amazing moment and also something the children and parents will cherish for years.

Have you had any strange requests/quirky suggestions or stories from customers? We have lots of quirky requests from customers to make personalised items for family, friends, teachers and for presentations which we are always pleased to accommodate.

At the moment we are making Christmas Eve plates in quite a few different languages for our customers.