Painted Plates: A Mother's Day Tutorial

The first time I ever thought about making painted plates, I was reading in the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Crafts. In the book, there is an entire section on painted china, which can also be found here on her website.  After copying a pattern from her book the first time, I decided to branch out a bit for my gift for my mom this Mother's Day.  My mother is a gardener, so I bought seed packs and painted plates corresponding to the species of flower that I bought.

Martha gives a great introduction to painting china, but I'll give you my slight modifications and step by step.  First, the material you'll need: 

• Ceramic plates.  I purchased mine at the local Dollar Tree because they were so inexpensive.  Don't feel limited to plates though!  You can use anything described as "microwave and dishwasher safe."  Platters, mugs, ceramic tiles, you name it, you can paint it.
• Bake on ceramic paint.  Pebeo's Porcelaine 150, which I found at Michael's, is what I used.  Porcelaine comes in either pens or pots.  I purchased the pots, which I felt were more versatile.
• Transfer paper.  You can use either simple carbon transfer paper (Martha recommends red), or use what I used, which is a bit more complicated (detailed below)
• A template. If you don't own the Encyclopedia of Crafts (you poor soul), you can find Martha's templates here.  I found most of my templates by searching Google Images for "[flower name] png black and white" or "[flower name] vector."  You can also look for coloring pages.
• Squeeze bottles or a VERY steady hand.  I used these, found at Michael's, but you can find similar products on Amazon.  It is possible to freehand with a paintbrush, but my hand is not nearly steady enough for that. 

The Evolution of a Logo

With the first post of my return, I thought I'd go through some recent work I did for a friend.  Her and her husband are starting out as photographers and wanted help setting up their blog on Squarespace (which I have to say is a pretty awesome service).  I wanted to show step by step the evolution of the design process.

The first thing we started with was the color palette.  We discussed a couple options in the same family but locked onto the following one before we started anything.

Design Seeds is a really cool website that helps you pick color palettes.  There are hundreds of palettes, from 5 to 7 colors, and I think it's a great way to start guiding a design.  Squarespace is a really great service for bloggers without code experience: it's more customizable than Blogger, but if you don't want to code at all, you don't have to (unlike Wordpress).  Someday I just may have to switch over!

We started out by choosing what colors we wanted prominent in the design.  The coral was chosen for the major titles, blue for accent headings and elements, mustard for links, and the peach for the background.   The gray was also used for some accent elements.