anyone fancy a cuppa?

I thought I'd show you the pictures I took yesterday of my newly painted cup and saucer in action. We ran out of milk though, so I decided to have peppermint tea instead. It was very enjoyable indeed.

I wanted to show you that the underside of the saucer is also painted - here it is! I'm not a huge fan of ginger biscuits but recently I have really been craving them. I had a craft day with the lovely Sian on Tuesday and what did she offer me as soon as I stepped through the door? A cup of tea and some ginger biscuits! Hurrah for Sian!

Time for a brew, me thinks...

it's all about the polka dots

This weekend, I did a spot of ceramic painting (can you see the pun in there?). I wanted to experiment with creating polka dots... and it worked! "How did you do it?", I hear you cry. Well, here's how...

Choose what it is you want to paint. I think white is the best background colour to have. But I'm sure cream would look good too. I chose a plain cup and saucer from Ikea.

Get some circular stickers and stick them on. These stickers aren't anything fancy. I think I got them from the Post Office (I've had them a while).

Pick the colour you want. I chose light blue (as you can see), so that meant mixing the colour first. I use water soluble ceramic paint so that if I make a mistake, I can wash it all off and start again (which I did!). It also means that I only need to use water to thin it. Don't wait for the paint to dry - peel the stickers off as soon as possible, otherwise they end up peeling the paint off.

The paint has to dry for at least 24 hours before it is baked in the oven. Once it's been fired, let it cool and then it's done!

Hurrah!

happy valentine's day

Hubby knows that if he spent any money on me this Valentine's Day, I would only tell him off (because we don't have the money to spend right now). This morning he presented me with a card made by... him! It was full of a sufficient amount of soppiness and I adore it.

I told Hubby not to look at my blog today (sometimes he'll have a little look while he's on his lunch-break) because I wanted to share this with you. On Tuesday I began painting a mug for him (instead of a valentine card). First I squeezed on the outliner stuff and left it to dry for 24 hours. Yesterday (24 hours later) I painted the mug...

(please excuse my messy desk)

Et voila! After leaving it to dry for another 24 hours, I baked it in the oven today to make it dishwasher-proof. Finished! When Hubby gets home, I plan to make him a cup of tea in his new mug :o)

I haven't done any ceramic painting in a while. What I used to do was bake the outliner onto the mug first and THEN add the paint and bake it a second time (which was what a couple of sets of instructions recommended) but if you bake it twice, the outliner stuff tends to bubble and that is NOT a good look.

What do you think?