Watercolour Plates and Bowls - Using pebeo Porcelain 150 paints.

The watercolour trend is everywhere and it's making its way off the papers and into our home decor, including our crockery. Today I'm going to show you a really simple way of getting a swirly watercolour design onto your plates and bowls. It's a very chimp proof way, even the hubby had a go with me!

Supplies are Simple :-
White Plate or Bowls
Bowl of Water
Pebeo Porcelain Paint in your choice of colours.
Paintbrush
and optional heat gun (to manipulate the paint)

First of all I mixed two colours together to get the wine coloured purple for our big square plate and small bowl,

As you can see I used the bright red and dark blue paints and mixed till I was happy with the shade of purple.
I then got the big square plate and dabbed a dollop of paint into the corner of the paint with a paint brush.

I then loaded up my brush with a heap of water and started dripping it into the corner of the paint to let it start running down into the blank surface.

then as it runs, you start to slightly tilt the plate to let the watered down paint move around, only tip slightly as you don't want it to just run everywhere that ruins the look (we may have done this a few times before I was happy)

We used a tea towel to prop to dish on its side so that the watered down paint could run back into itself, we then left it to dry a little, then re tilted it, to give depths in the shades of purple so that some swirls were lighter and some dark, then I decided to manipulate the paint with a heat gun to get a more marbled look in some parts.

By using the heat gun I was able to manipulate when and how the layers dried, moving them around to dry in fascinating patterns. I feel this game the best splat like effect overall and continued to do this method with each of the other bowls and platters I had.

 The Result, its beautiful bright and unpredictable watercolour platters and bowls, they are truly stunning in real life, and I can see these being favourited by me when it comes time to serve things. The dark blue bowl will be my daily cereal bowl I can see it already.

I hope you decide to have a go at this really easy tutorial, the results will vary depending on how adventurous you feel! but I can assure you each one will be stunning and each will be uniquely your own creation!

Next month I'm going to create some watercolour inspired napkins, I am a little watercolour obsessed!

Until next time, keep creating!
x Courtney

Fingerpainting with class - Save a Teapot.

I must admit, I've had a love hate relationship with the glass and porcelain paints, trying to bend them to my will, sometimes working with my cake dish and sometimes not...(with projects now in the bin) but one thing I never tried with these paints...it just using my fingers.

Going at it like a little kid, and just fingerpainting. We all did it, once upon a time, took to paint with wild abandon and I decided to today I was going to do the same.

Today we are turning a $1.00 op shop teapot into something a little more inviting!

Today we are using the following supplies
An Op Shop unloved teapot.
1. Paintbrush (which I barely used)
2. Plastic palette to mix colours.
3. The Pebeo Porcelaine 150 paint pots in various colours.
4. Black Pebeo Porcelaine markers for little bit of outlines
4 Your Fingers!

I love messy flowers, they are fuss free and anyone can create messy painterly looking flowers with not much effort at all!

First you want to get your red out  two blobs, one for pure red, and one for mixing with white to get depth into you flowers.
After having a lot of issues with paintbrushes, this is where my idea for finger painting came from!

I created one big red flower on one side of the teapot and two smaller flowers, this was just creating the general shape of a poppy, I did say fuss free its easy to make these look more involved then they are. I got so involved and excited about the flowers there was no images of this! I forgot I was making this for others!

 I mixed some red and blue together on the side to make a dark purple almost black, and just dabbed it into the center on each flower.

 Its a little messy but its total fun!












I then wanted to make some messy looking foliage so I grabbed the green pot, and added some white to lighten it up, I added pure green, and lightened green to create 'leaf like shapes' see you don't need to be an artist to make this teapot look cute.

I had the two separate greens on two fingers and just added them interchangeably. 

Just pop the greens in the places around the red flowers, lights and darks and before you know it you have a painterly looking poppie posie.

I then waited  a night for one side to dry, then started the second side, as I needed to lie it down so gravity didn't take my flowers to the bottom of the pot.

I also wanted to give the spout and handle some flare, so I created a striped handle, just a tip, if you want a very opaque black, you will need to apply the black in layers, it took me many layers of black to get it opaque to my liking.

as you can see in this terribly lit image (I was working at night) this was two layers, it took 7 layers of black to get it the way the finish look.

In the end I ditched the brush and started applying the black with my fingers to get a thicker layer of black.
I added little white highlights to the center of the flowers, and little black outlines around some of the leaves to give depth.

Once you are happy with your teapot, give it a full 24 hours to cure before you put it in the oven.
150 degrees for 50 mins. After the 50 mins, is up I turned the oven off and left the door open to let it cool fully before removing it.

And then the finished product looks a little something like this!

 It may not be designer, but its handmade and imperfect and I'm in love with it!

So go save a teapot from an op-shop and give it another life. Its a lovely weekend project, and leaves you with something that no one else will have! also makes a very cute house warming gift for loved ones.
Stay tuned for another project I have installed next week for the book lovers.

Courtney Diaz

Make original beautiful gifts with Pebeo Porcelaine 150

My first attempt at Procelaine painting, and Oh My what fun! I needed a gift for my mother In law and this is perfect, a Huge serving Bowl and Platter, a matching pair.  She is going to love it. The cool thing about the Pebeo Glass and Porcelaine Paints and Markers is that you can tailor make each item to suit individual tastes. This is exactly her style.
Check out my tutorial on snap guide below.

Check out How to Make Plain Porcelain Servingware Outstanding!!! by Siann Watts on Snapguide.

How to create a zen doodle plate border design with Pebeo Porcelain 150 markers

How to Create a Zen Doodle border plate design

Check out How to Create a Zen Doodle Plate by Peta Thompson on Snapguide.
Pebeo porcelaine 150 marker zendoodle tutorial on our youtube channel

Hey Mickey you're so fine! Do you want to be my Valentine?

"Hey Mickey you're so fine! 

Do you want to be my Valentine?"

By Natalie Wyatt 

Made with "Pebeo Porcelaine 150 Ceramic Paint and Markers"

This design is only a suggestion, as you could draw anything that is meaningful for you and your Valentine, or even just for the fun of it! These steps will show you how to very easily create simple designs for a special occasion.

 What you will need:

(The items in this list are specifically for this tutorial, if you wish to use a different design or colours, then you may need more)

• 1 x Pebeo Porcelaine Paint in "Anthracite Black" (Glossy)
• 1 x 1.2mm Pebeo Porcelaine Paint Marker in "Anthracite Black" (Glossy)
• 1 x 1.2mm Pebeo Porcelaine Paint Marker in "Scarlet Red" (Glossy)*
• 1 x Ceramic Plate/Bowl/Other (I used a small plate from a 12 piece set from Kmart, which was $12 if my memory serves me well. The plate is glazed already.)
• 1 x Small Paintbrush (I used Princeton Art & Brush Co. Golden Taklon Synthetic Hair #1 Round)
• 1 x Dark Graphite Pencil (Preferably 4B and above, I used a 5B)
• Scissors and Tape
• Water to clean your Brush
• Scrap Paper to cover your workbench
• A printed design on paper, I found this Mickey Mouse design here: http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss55/andreina21/mickey-mouse-heads.png

* Scarlet Red Marker not Shown.

You can complete this tutorial using just the Pebeo Markers, but if you have or would like to use the pot of paint, you can use it for small touch-ups.

For those who wish to hand-draw their designs, you can skip these first few steps.

 Firstly, take your design and flip it over so that the inked side is face down.

 Then, using your 5B Graphite Pencil, shade over the back of the design. Apply as much pressure as possible and shade as generously large as you wish.

Once you have covered the back of your design, cut out the design. As you can see from mine, it doesn't have to be perfect! He he!

Make sure your plate has been washed and dried thoroughly before applying the design. 

Place your design in the desired position and stick it down with tape.

Then, using your pencil again, or a sharp pointed object like a protractor point, (or as I am using here, a lead-less mechanical pencil), trace over the design. Making sure you are applying as much pressure as possible without ripping through the paper.

If you don't stick down all the sides of your paper, you can keep lifting and edge to check whether you've missed a section or not.

Hopefully, when you are done and you take away the paper, you should be left with an imprint of your design. 

This is why it's important to be using a dark leaded pencil, because the graphite is softer and transfers easier than a H pencil.

Looking good!

To get your marker started you will need to shake it a few times.

(*With the lid on! I made the mistake once of shaking it without the lid and splattering myself like a Jackson Pollock Artwork!). 

Then press the nib repeatedly against a piece of paper until the ink fills the tip.

If at any point your ink starts to run out after you have begun drawing with it, just press it a few times, to flood the nib with more paint.

 Now, using your reference you can outline your lines and fill in the appropriate sections with the marker paint.

• Tip Number 1: If you want thinner lines, stroke the marker quickly in short movements and keep joining on to the line. If you continue with one line you will end up with a thick edge.
• Tip Number 2: When shading, follow the shape of your outline and unlike when outlining, continue with the same line back and forth filling in the gaps without starting a new stroke each time.
• Tip Number 3: If you make a mistake, you will have a chance to quickly take the paint off with a tissue or q-tip, or even a thin wet paintbrush. After baking, if you have removed some paint, it may leave you with a smudge that you don't notice until after it's baked, but you can rub that off with your finger afterwards.

 Ta-da!

I used the faster strokes to complete the rest of this design, whereas I used slower and thicker lines for the ears.

You can now use your thin brush and pot of paint to fix up any mistakes or clean up some of the lines you may want to smooth.

A word of warning, if you want to paint over the top of existing paint, it is best to wait until your first layer is dry otherwise you may lift up the paint that's already there or create dints.

And since it's the Valentines Season, I figured we could add some love hearts if you're gifting this to someone special. 

I've just hand-drawn mine with the pencil, but if you want to trace the hearts in the same way we did Mickey, then this should be done before any painting takes place.

Using the Scarlet Marker I filled in the love hearts.

 Once the paint had dried enough, I took my lead-less mechanical pencil tip and scratched out some of the paint in the gap between the side of the head and the eye, because my marker was too thick for this delicate spot.

Once you've finished, allow 24 hours to dry completely and then bake in a normal oven at 150 degrees for 35 minutes. 

Allow to cool and you're ready to go!

It should now be dish-washer safe, but I've just personally found that hand-washing them is safest.

When my design came out of the oven, (as mentioned previously) I discovered a few smudges on the plate that must have occurred when I touched the plate with paint residue on my fingers. However once the plate had cooled down, but was still slightly warm, I just gently rubbed it back and forth until it came off.

Other than that you should have yourself a lovely little gift or spunky plate to use!

Please send us photos of your designs!

And Happy Valentines Day!

Natalie Wyatt

Natalie's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/nataliebethart?pnref=lhc