A Bit Late to the Party, But...

Porcelain Pens! Well, I've seen brilliant examples of porcelain doodling all over the internet and was intrigued...of course. Whilst I'm certainly no Da Vinci {as you might have noticed!} I do like a doodle and these pens seem pretty perfect for that.

I was enthusing about them at the market with a fellow stall holder {yep, L!} who suggested we replace our cha mugs with some spangly new ones - adding some embellishment to establish cha mug ownership! Here, here. Also handy 

for noting your cha requirements for whoever is tasked with catering the round!

Anyhoo, they arrived today. L's off with the red and I pinched the black. Too impatient to plan a design, I nabbed a spare plate and the geese stencil from yesterday to see how well the ink worked. Not bad, is the verdict. Fine point works well & is great for hand written script and it can be used on glass too. Endless possibilities.

Now, sit aside for three days before bunging in the dishwasher. Let's see what happens.

{Update...Fantastic! I propped the little plate up on the large old kitchen dresser I have on sale at the market for decoration and a lovely regular customer went right ahead and bought it!}

Geese Finale...

and the stencil worked! No bleeding or smudges..just nice crisp lines. Contact paper is great for this kind of one off job. It's laborious but worth it. You don't need to go back and neaten up the edges...and, if you're careful when you peel it off, you can just stick it to some transparent paper and use again at a later date.

Colour Block Table with Geese Stencil

Here's a little peak of a table top stencil I'm working on just now. Usually I try and leave the tops of pieces alone and work to preserve them {sanding, staining, sealing and waxing} but sometimes the wood is just not in good enough nick {deep gauges, stains etc} and is hard to restore to a good finish.

Take the large table I've been working on. It looked great...fantastic solid wood legs and a heavy wood top. Alas, on further inspection {peak underneath} it turns out the top is a veneered fiber board of some sort! Whats the problem you ask...well, if you want to sand the dings, wear and tear and poor stain job off the edging...you're left with a weird chippy fiber board texture. Not great.

Whilst I paint furniture, I mostly prefer to paint only the wood that can't be restored well {thin veneers with chips and bubbling etc}. So, in the case of the large dining table, rather than painting over the whole top surface because the edging is bad, I want to incorporate a design that allows as much as possible of the wood to show through. Right now, I'm puzzling over the best design.

In the meantime however, I'm using the stencil shown here to finish off the top of the wee block colour table I'm working on.

I absolutely love this logo...

Very simple and neat...perfect.