Pinterest Fail: Baking Sharpies onto Porcelain

Oh, I wanted this to work. I wanted this to work so badly.


It seems so simple: draw what you'd like on porcelain with a Sharpie, bake it, and enjoy it! The website I got this from even said I could run it through the dish washer.


So I got an adorable pitcher, some Sharpies of various colors, and went to work.


I found a pattern I loved online and slowly drew it on the vase, careful not to touch that areas I had already drawn, lest I smudge my masterpiece before baking it.


They had suggested 30 minutes at 350. I decided to err on the side of overdone and left it in for a solid hour, placing it gently on a heating pad to cool fully after I was done.


I returned to it about 5 hours later, when I knew it was completely cooled. I picked it up with my hands -- which happened to be damp -- only to find that my thumb was already smudging some of the artwork. Uh oh.


I decided to give the project the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was just excess Sharpie that I had smudged off. And I wasn't about to put it in the dish washer, in case it needed a more gentle cleaning.


The problem is that it could withstand no cleaning. After a simple rinse in the sink with soap, water, and a sponge, I was left with maybe 40% of my design.


This number dropped to 10% once I ran it through the washing machine.


The plus side is that, since it was so easy for the pattern to wash off, all I needed was a sponge to get the rest off. At the end of the day, I do now have a beautiful new water pitcher for my plant and my cat's water bowl. I guess it'll just have to be design-free.