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. 

First, completely clean your plates.  You don't have to run them through a dishwasher, but if you can that'd be better.  Fill your squeeze bottles with the colors of paint you'd like to use.  I only had one bottle, so I had to clean everything out before each new color, which was tedious, but effective.  If you're doing it this way, I suggest prepping each plate in advance and using the same color all at once.  I used the #1 (smallest) tip from my squeeze bottle set for this project.  A note on adding the color from the pot to the bottle: make a small funnel out of paper, and throw it away after!

I used three colors for my plates: Sapphire, Bronze Green, and Coral.  You can get a great starting set from Amazon here with all the colors you'd ever want to start with for under $40.  

Next, print off your templates.  The detail should not be too small.  If you are doing dots instead of straight lines (very common with the Martha Stewart patterns) be sure to choose a pattern that allows space between the dots.  The Porcelaine is very runny and will cause your dots to form blobs if you're not careful!

After doing this, transfer your pattern to the plate.  It would probably be easiest to use transfer paper, but I used a method I had on hand.  Using a student lab notebook from an old chemistry course, I ripped the top (blue) page out and used that to transfer a shiny image to the plate using a ballpoint pen. The stacking order for the transfer is, top to bottom: pattern, transfer material, plate.  Pressing very hard on a ballpoint pen will easily transfer your pattern.

The next step is to practice!  Try using your pattern paper as a practice sheet, tracing and trying to get the right thickness.  Also, try to make sure to clean the tip of your bottle regularly on this paper.  If there is any water left in your bottle from cleaning, you can also get this out on the scrap sheet. 

Once you've transferred your pattern and practiced a bit, you can start painting!  Doing one color at a time, you can make lines or dots, corresponding to the aesthetic you are going for.  

To do the writing on the edges, I used a highlighter to freehand the words before painting over them.  The highlighter will easily come off and will not stick to the plate, even after firing in the oven.  In the picture below, you can see a light orange mark inside the lowercase G.  I was actually able to wipe this off without issue at the end of the process. 

When drawing straight lines, be sure to go from the thick parts to thin parts, brushing up at the end of a line to avoid a dark dot.

Once you have painted your plates, set them aside and let them dry for 24 hours, or follow the directions on your ceramic paint.  After this, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F, and bake for 35 minutes.  When taking the plates out of the oven, be sure to allow them to fully cool.  After another 24 hours of curing, they are dishwasher and food safe!    Here are my finished plates: 

 

Finally, wrap as you want, add in the seed packs, and you're done!

Do you like it?  Have you used a different method?  Let me know in the comments!