March 14, 2012

more fun with porcelain pens

These pens a a little bit addictive. Several times this weeks I've caught myself looking at my perfectly good and pre-patterned dishes thinking "I could add a little something something to this." Mostly I've resisted, other than finishing off my white mug project.
Yesterday I hit up the HomeGoods store in search of more mugs (see, addictive) and wound up instead with a plain white cake stand from the clearance rack that was just begging to be doodled on.
A cake stand has been on my when we have a house again list - along with chickens and a spinning wheel - ever since I broke mine before Christmas. I know a lot of people would call them a waste of space but I've found that even a plain, unfrosted cake seems fancy and special if you put it on a cake stand, so I've been missing mine and this one was too good, and too cheap, to pass up. So home it came and while Briton worked on an adventure story about Egyptian Gods in red disco suits, I doodle a doily on my cake stand.
As I said before, I'm a terrible artist, and I do not have much of a steady hand, but this style lends itself well to that. It's easy to cover up any mistakes with more swirls, bumps and lines. See this ugly wobbly line?

Looks fine now, right?
I think the key here is to start from the middle, work around on that level, and then add a new circle.
I used a roll of tape and two plates to make the ever larger circles and then just added little details to each as I worked my way to the outside edge.
Then if there are spaces that look blank, you can add in more once the work you have done is dry to the touch. I had planned to continue but Briton looked up and said "You know mom, the key to art is knowing when to stop." So I took his very good advice and stopped, and really, I love it.
Now I just need to bake a cake to put on the doodled doily.
Or I could just run down to the bakery and buy one. There was an awesome report card in the house today. I think we deserve cake!