DIY Porcelain Dish Art

My sister came over to visit this weekend.  I always save a bunch of project ideas in the back of my head for when she visits.  Mostly fun things that Sak wouldn't be interested in. Like drawing. On dishware.

I bought these black porcelain paint pens from Michael's - they were on sale for $2.99 each.  They make both a 1.2 and 0.7 size, so I went with the smaller nib for better control.

Armed with one pen each, thrifted porcelain (or what we thought was porcelain) dishes, and a few printouts of reference pictures - we were ready!

The first pen stroke on the plate was the hardest.  We were so nervous! But once we started, we just went with it.  There's very little room for error with a paint pen - but that's part of the fun (and gives the drawings..character! Haha).

I drew a Dalek, spurred on by my recent Dr. Who fever. It's definitely not to scale and there's plenty of wobbly lines and bits, but I kind of love it.  Though Sak wishes I had made the writing bigger.

Penga-Sis, a recent Keroro Gunsou (Sgt. Frog) convert, opted for her favorite character - Giroro.

She also did a cup and saucer, the saucer with her own original characters (OC's) and the cup with Portal references.

I started on another small dish, with more Dr. Who references >.>".

I want to fill up the whole thing though - so it's not quite finished. Any other characters or quotes I simply must add? Maybe I should finish watching it all first.  I've only seen the new doctors and not enough of the older stuff.

Anyway, after we finished drawing we let them dry for 24 hours (I know! So long!) and then we baked them in the oven for 35 minutes at 300 degrees F.  I'm (so far) impressed at how tough the paint is, and even though the pens say they aren't recommended for food contact, they are non-toxic and I will probably eat off them.

But if you're worried about possibly eating ink, you could just paint the outside of your dish, or just make decorative dishes.  

Anyway, I love my little black pen, and I think any cookies I give out in the future will be arriving on some sort of absurdly decorated plate. And even if you're not interested in drawing things, you could easily make a pretty dot pattern or something - the pens come in all sorts of different colors!