Scavenger Chic

Thrift Store Makeover, Doodling on Ceramics

• By Joan
• January 29, 2020
• 10 Comments

Thrift Store Makeover, Doodling on Ceramics

Isn’t this a cute little pot?  I found him at the thrift store a couple months ago with all intentions of doing an image transfer.  After a week of searching for the perfect transfer I switched directions and here I am doodling on my cute little pot.

Gather your supplies, a paint marker, a pot  (a mug, a cannister…), alcohol, and paint thinner.  The Paint Thinner is only there in case I need to erase and start over.

By the way, the alcohol is for the pot and not me.  🙂

Before I get further into my DIY, has anyone seen a pot like this before?  Do you have any idea what it would be used for?

The little bowl in the right corner fits into the larger bowl on top.  It reminds me of a potpourri pot but it doesn’t have the ventilation holes that a normal potpourri pot would have.  Any ideas?

I bought the pen at Michael’s.  I had been doing research on Sharpie oil based pens, but this is the one they had in stock.  Not many directions included other than, “shake pen up and down to mix paint, while pen is facing up, push nib down to release air into the pen before using”.  Sounds simple enough.

Like I said, I did research on Sharpie oil based pens and I found this great science experiment.  Destination Decoration tried out all the different color sharpies, baked at different temperatures for different amounts of time and then runs her coffee mugs thru the dishwasher.

My Craft Smart pen never mentioned baking but who am I to argue with a great science experiment.

And now for some inspiration.  I went back and forth whether to do buildings, people or just flowers.  As you can see, I settled on flowers.  If you need inspiration just google “flower doodles” and hundreds pop up like the two I’m sharing.  The one above is from 123RF.

This one is from “My Flower Journal” .

Other bloggers mention cleaning your pot with alcohol before starting to get rid of any greasy fingerprints.

Find your inspiration and just start drawing.  It helps for the stems to go all the way to the bottom of your cup or bowl so it doesn’t look like they’re floating.

Keep going until you come back to your starting point.  I must say that I spent way more time researching than I did on the actual project.

I’m showing you all sides of my project.  Pretty sure none of these flowers exist in real life, but who cares?  The point of doodling is to have fun.

Based on other recommendations I did end up baking my pot to set the paint.  I don’t know what the ultimate temperature and time is but mine was baked at 300° for an hour and a half.  I tried scratching the paint off with my fingernail and nothing happened.

I would not recommend this paint pen for something that will be used every day.  The paint did say you could use it on ceramic and glass and while it didn’t scratch off,  it did smudge with a little washing. The paint was super easy to use but I may need to purchase the Sharpie version for a little comparison.  I’ll let you know.  If you need to seal your project, I would recommend dishwasher safe ModPodge.

Since it’s almost Valentine’s Day, here is a link to some heart doodles.   And how cute would these building doodles look, or you may be inspired by my doodle table from 2018.

So get out there find your inspiration and find your pot and start on your own thrift store makeover.

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