Thursday 23 May 2013

the Pintester Movement- How to Decorate a Coffee Mug Using a Porcelain Marker

My last post was about how much I love Pinterest, this post is sorta related.  I follow this blog of Sonja Foust who runs the blog Pintester.  She blogged about trying some of the more "interesting" pins that people see when scrolling down the everything & popular pages of Pinterest.  I love her and her blog, it's supper funny and I recommend you read it.

She's starting a thing called the Pintester Movement, where we try some pins and see how they go. I think I picked a pretty easy one, and I was pretty sure it was going to work on way or an other.  

How to Decorate a Coffee Mug Using a Porcelain Marker

From tuts+

So it isn't a Sharpie Marker mug, that I know for sure doesn't work. I was pretty sure that the porcelain marker would work on, you know, porcelain.  But I was skeptical of there transfer method.  So here I am, testing it.

Step one: Take you sharpie Marker mug that's been sitting in your kitchen for the past year and wash off all the shit from it.  

 

So last year I tried to make a mug with a caffeine molecule, with underneath saying "All you need is C8H10N4O2." Thought it would be fun for my first year of Engineering. As you can tell, the sharpie chipped off.  So I washed it expecting it to be a little hard to take off.  That was not the case, it came off easier and BAM.   A nice mug to try this pin on.

So clean 

 So I printed out the monsters the site recommended, I was too uncreative to come up this something else.
Toke this picture in my basement with bad lighting, it happens 

 So next I toke the darkest pencil from my collection (yeah, I have more than one pencil type, it's what you get when you have to take Architecture classes). I think it was a B?  I can't recall. Doesn't matter you go over the important parts with it.

Here's our little monster fellow all draw up. If you squint your eyes, you can sorta tell I drew over it. 

Next taping that mother to your mug.  It was harder than expected.  Why you ask?  Paper is flat, mugs are not, so I had to put little folds in it to make it work. After a bit taping and bitching it when on.  

Than I toke my marker and rubbed it all over the paper. I wasn't expecting much from this transfer.  


And nothing much came from it.  But enough to to wig it.

Which is what I did,  and it looks pretty good. I have a orange porcelain marker from a kit I got during my reading week, which was convenient.

Since the mug was a little bland with only the monster on and that creative juices where now flowing, I free handed some extra on to it. 

Lizzie Bennet quote

So this part I was a little confused about the box I got the pen in said wait 24 hours then bake at 300 for 35 mins. The pen it self said let sit for 72 hours.  I'm to impatience for that so I waited 23 hours then cooked it.   


So here's a little 360 turn of my mug all finished up. 

 


And here's my first cup of tea with it.  I haven't washed it yet, because I'm to scared but I'll post an update after it happens and tell you how it went.

Update: I had washed it, nothing came off!! I'm so happy, the pens claimed it was dish washer safe but I'm going to stick to hand washing it.  I'd say that as long as you're not rubbing to hard it should stay for a good while.
Mmmmmm
So my conclusion, the whole transfer technique technically worked, but it was more effort than it was worth to get all of it off there.  If you are half decent at drawing, you should just go free hand and use a picture as a reference.   If you can't draw... Well the transfer might help, but be warned it might not.
 




I was having font problems, so don't judge my really bad ms paint job.  


So since the pin went pretty well, I feel like I need to mess one up to really be in the spirit of the movement, so keep an eye out for that.  

Thanks you Sonja this was fun. 

Check it out for yourself

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Pinterest is my interest

Hello my lovelies,
So you might have heard of a website call Pinterest.  I'm had my account for about a year, and I absolutely love it.  I'm sure if I spent all the time on Pinterest for other things I would be a billion times more accomplished.

But here are some really sweet pins that I've seen recently.

For my nerd stuff board:
  
From the artofgaming on Tumblr
I just started playing Legends of Zelda this year, and slowing have been working my way through Ocarina of Time.  I really like the game, and the fanart done by people is just beautiful, and I'm very impressed with this stain glass piece.  Because look that it, it's fantastic.


From Anita at tardisboard,proboards.com 
I love this for two reasons, I'm a whovian and a Engineering student.   I really like this blue print of the Tradis, I really like the attention to detail and how hard core all the measurements.  This would have made the professor the taught us CAD proud.



Okay last one from my nerd Board. Not sure if this counts as a nerd think but... 
From mathieuhervouet on Flickr 
I have a love/hate relationship with Netflix,  it's great from watching TV shows, and that can be very distracting.  In the past school year I watched the first 7 seasons.  Which over 8 months isn't bad. But sometimes my time could have been spent in a more productive fashion.  I love this minimalist poster for the show.  It has a lot of running jokes from the show and over all is a great poster and really captures the feel of the show.


Now from my Cute Craft Board:

From Martin at Behance.net
I really like this, although I know I won't ever make it, because it would take forever and I would use those pins for sewing projects.  I really enjoy the concept. 


From oneaviandaemon
I have every intention of making this, it's so cute and simple and I'm a sucker for skirts with pockets. So look for a future post where I'm wearing this :P

From Martha Stewart 
I think this is so cute and sorta clever.  I think it would be so cute to make and I might do it at some point but I'm not sure.


That's all for now I think it's a good spot to stop.  I might make more posts like this to show you more about the stuff that inspires me, and that I find pretty 


Much love,
Zoe


Friday 10 May 2013

It's Friday, and here's some works in progress

Hello,

The passed week was very relaxed, I'm hoping to start work soon, but in the meantime I've been working on a lot of projects, this week two of my friends have asked me to do some stuff for them, which I've included some pictures of below.


Here's the belly of a penguin that I'm crocheting for my friend.  It's going to be a pillow and I'm hoping its going to be adorable.  So far I'm loving it, and I'll try to make a tutorial of it after.
   


 Here's my current spinning progress,  it's kinda on the back burner at the moment while I work on the penguin and the dress (I'll talk about it in a sec).  But I'm going to work on it soon, my mom who toke up spinning at the same time as me, has finished all her stuff.  Below is a picture of my first spinning project.  


Here's the entrelac cowl I've been working on for a while, I wrote about it last post.  It was around so I toke some pictures it and added in this post.   



Here's the dress I'm working on, I started it this morning and its be very quick and easy to do.  It's four pieces and its a variation of a pattern that I found in my house, by added a sleeve.  

Here's pretty much what it will look like when its done, I just need to do the neck and sleeves and maybe shorten the bottom.  


This is the last work in progress, a curvy friendship bracelet, the colors are hard to capture on camera, they are a bit brighter in real life.  




Here's a bracelet that I finished last week and it's going into my shop this weekend, I just need to get some better pictures.  I like it but it's a little on the shorter side which makes me sad.  




This post might have been a little all over the place but I just wanted to let you guys what I've been up too.  


But that's all for now, I hope you have a fabulous weekend. 


Zoe  

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Getting closer to summer

Hello,

Its the first of May, and the weather here is absolutely fabulous, its warm enough you don't have to wear a jacket, but you don't work up a sweat.   So I when outside to enjoy the sunshine and take some pictures of the entrecal scarf that I've been working on.



So as you can tell, I've done about a foot of the red and black.   I'm really enjoying it and I love the way that its looks woven.  

 

I've also finished my first spinning project, I did about 55 feet and it's pretty awesome.   I'm pretty excited and started to spin some red too.

That's pretty much all for now,

Zoe