Pottery: "Welcome" sign w/ Nature impressions?

Tree bark can be done, lots of my students use it. And you can get different barks with different textures. And the following:

Acorns (the tops have great texture)

Ferns

Dried spore branch from Sensitive ferns

Shells of all kinds

Drift wood

Milkweed pods

Marsh grass tops

Cattails

Branches or twigs (Winged Euonymous has very unusual branches)

Straw

Seed pods (all kinds, dried)

The link below is for Natural Elements Pottery, pottery impressed with nature. That should give you some more ideas. Have fun, it sounds like a great project.

Any flowers may work, but what about a few sprigs of a grass? That is very identifiable as plant material in nature when used as an impression. Some flowers don't make a good impression because they depend on colour more than shape. But any part of most trees will work: bark, branches, leaves, seed pods.

Well if you have a tree with firm thick bark it would work. You could also go out and see if you can find any animal prints to mimic, like deer prints and such. You could always go with a multiple of leaves from different trees, like pine needles (still on a thin branch) maple leaf, oak leaf, ect so you can go tropical and so shell imprints, maybe get a cheap sea horse and sand dollar to use.

What ever you choose I am sure it will be awesome

Great question Blu. Many years ago I went to a place called Buzzard Mine, somewhere in Arizona and It was very interesting. It is far out in the desert, from Mesa/Phoenix area. I believe north west. There were actual buzzards seen resting on posts as you travel into the old mining town. The town was practically as it was, in structure that is, as it was during the last days of the gold rush. The roads were hard to walk on even in my tennis. The desert dust was everywhere. And the town saloon hotel is definitely no where I would have wanted to stay. And all I could keep saying was thank God I was born in 1955.