A Mother's Day message

Dear mothers all over the world,


     Have a happy and joyful mother's day! Be loved and cherished by your dear children whom you worked so hard to bring to this world and raise in love and gentleness. God bless us all!

Cheers!

A journey through a porcelain painting project

Hi everyone!


    Today I am going to take you through the steps of a porcelain painting project that I completed recently. The project consisted of seven dessert plates which I painted in vintage style. I have always loved and admired the old china sets for their colorful and sweet roses and flowers, their luxurious gilded decorations and the skillful mastery of their painters. I must say I am a total novice at this style so my results are on a much lower level. I also chose a rather simplified wreath pattern with two roses, pink and yellow and some smaller forget-me-not flowers on the sides.


     It was rather tough in the beginning, but practice and repetition is a foolproof and time-honoured method of eventually getting it right! well...almost :) 


     After deciding how my pattern was going to look like here are the steps I took to complete this project:
   1. First I divide my plates into equal parts and decide about how you position the repetitions of your pattern. 


   2. After marking the divisions with a Stabilo pencil I made some marks to indicate where my main roses and the curves of the wreath are going to be.

My plate marked with Stabilo pencil

Roses are outlined by Stabilo pencil

   3. After that I had to prepare the colors. Porcelain painting colors come in the form of powder and we have to mix them with some medium. This part is really fun! I always feel like an old renaissance master who has to make his own paints, or a chemist working in a lab. We have to spread a little bit of the powder on a piece of tile and add a few drops of oil and mix it with a pallet knife until we reach the desired consistency.


   4. Now comes the serious part! This style of painting is done by simple brush stroke and is done in many layers. Each layer has to be fired in the kiln before the next one can be painted on the top.

One of the plate after layer one is painted

You can see here that after the first layer is painted the pattern is rather pale and undefined

   5. After painting the first layer the pattern looks pale and and undefined but the base of our flowers and stems and leaves are visible. Now comes the second layer! We have to add shadow and depth to the bland spots of color at the base of our pattern and make the flowers show. In the same layer we can add some fine lines with a very thin brush which designate the contour of our pattern. This step really brings the whole thing to life! And after that off to the kiln it goes for the second firing!

 After the second layer is painted

As you cans see now the pattern is much more clear and colorful and deep

   
   6.The next step is to add the color to the rim of the plate. For this purpose the paint has to be made a bit runnier than usual because we need to tap it unto the surface of the plate with a pad as thinly and as evenly as possible. And again off to the kiln it goes for the third round of firing.

The first plate that I painted turned out rather different than the rest so I decided to paint its rim with a different color

Here is the turquoise-rimmed plate. I think it looks rather cute actually!

Here are my plates after the rim is painted

Here are my plates on the tray ready to be transferred to the kiln

    7. The last but not least step is adding gilded decorations to the rim. And again to the kiln it goes for the fourth and last firing!

Gold decorations are brown and not shinny before firing

     Et voila!! A nice vintage style desert-plate set is ready and hopefully it will be enjoyed and many a delicious and appetizing dessert will be served in them for many years to come! Thanks for visiting!

I decided to leave the turquoise plate without any gold decorations. It looks cuter this way!

Cheers!