I finished my craft project…..wait til you see it!

A few weeks ago, a blogger who I follow (and who is on my sidebar…..Lindsay Ostrom) showed some awesome plates that a friend of hers made and that she was going to copy.  Apparently, these have been on Pinterest many times (and I'm a goof for never seeing them!)  Since my sister is the baker in the family, and gives muffins, cookies, etc. to everyone she knows for whatever reason, I thought they would be a perfect gift for her for Christmas.  Anyway, I read about the process Linsay was going to use and checked out the internet as to various other methods and decided to go the best route, so ordered these pens from Amazon.  Since I was going to write on porcelain, they were reported to do the job the best!

Only one problem…..when I tried them out on paper (thank God), the fine tipped one, blobbed ink out all over!  Needless to say, I wasn't happy!  I took a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and Michaels, but neither had the same pens.  Thankfully, I read online that I could also use plain, ordinary Sharpies, but more care had to be taken to assure a good finished product.  Being the drawer of envelopes…..I had a bunch of Sharpies in all sorts of colors, so I went to town.

This was #3 (although the first 2 aren't bad), when I decided to get fancy and also use colored markers in addition to the black.  After finishing, I was to let it sit for 24 hours to make sure it was completely dry, then put in a cold oven, set the temp to 425 degrees, and bake it for 30 minutes, turn off the oven and let it cool down completely in the oven before taking it out.  Cool!

So when I took it out, the plate looked like this:

WHAT??……the red hearts turned yellow??  Actually, sort of yellow/brownish!  Yuck!  I was bummed!  Back to Target for more plates!  I wondered what would happen with bright pink….so I tried that.  Here it is before the baking process.  Note too that the writing with the finer Sharpie sets up lighter after baking.

Yeah…success!  Don't worry about the lines that you see on the next (baked plate) picture…..I took the photo in my dining room at night and the chandelier shadowed the plate…..BUT, check out the colors! The pink stayed pink!  Hurray!

So, that project is done and now my sister will have 5 Giving Plates the next time she "gifts" someone with yummies!  I didn't check out the dishwasher worthiness though, so if they fade, so be it!  I KNOW they are hand washable!

Then, per usual, I sent out a few envelopes with books to my sweeties!

And, I read one and 3/4 books this week.  Hopefully today, I will finish the last 1/4…..and it's good!

THE LOOK OF LOVE                      by                Sarah Jio
A PRISONER OF BIRTH                 by                Jeffrey Archer

So, there you have it!  Pretty much my week in a nutshell.  Always so much to do this time of year!  I hope you all are settling down to a routine.  Make time for yourself too!  It's important!