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mademyownco

Ceramic tile painting

My husband booked us this ceramic tile painting for us to do an activity together on a Saturday afternoon. I know how lucky I am to have a thoughtful partner plan things for us to do together that I enjoy :)


The workshop was at Artefakts at Goodman Arts Centre in a cosy workshop bathes in sunshine (there was a window on the ceiling!)

We got to choose the designs we to paint, from a whole stack of pictures with a diverse range of styles. I am not usually great at deciding, but thankfully the husband was there to help confirm my decisions :D

We started by tracing the design on to the tile...

...and then painted the parts with porcelain paint (look - there's the sunlight from the window on the ceiling)...

...what it looks like when all the paint is done...

...and finally after doing the outlining!

Here are our tiles - husband chose the one with a bird because it reminds us of the sunbirds that visit our balcony from time to time

We were debating where to put up the tiles (he was originally thinking of the guest bathroom, but I protested because we put in so much effort - more details below), and finally landed on displaying it a frame at our reading corner:


 

Details of the workshop


Duration: 2.5 hours (I think we might have taken a bit longer)


Price: $75 per person for 2 pax or more, booked on Artefakts's website


Level of "fun": 2.5/5


Painting was not with a brush, but squeezing a little bottle of porcelain paint carefully on each part, and "dragging" the paint with the nozzle to cover the space. This was actually quite fun at the start, because it's not a common way of painting I have ever encountered.


We could also choose the different paint colours and types to fill the design - there are different types e.g. opaque, translucent, metallic, matte paints, and they make the final product have such different looks.


Honestly, after the designing and initial novelty of painting with a nozzle, it got a bit tiring, as it requires hard work to consistently paint the rest of the piece. This is much like many types of craft, where quite a bit of effort needs to be put in to complete a piece.


Level of difficulty: 2.5/5


It depends on how you decide to paint your design - I wanted to attempt the gradient, and that was a little bit more difficult as I had to "blend" the transition in colours. I say "blend", because the paint won't actually blend due to the paint properties, but we can try to "draw" the paint into the next section (using a toothpick), to look somewhat like it is blending. I was being extra, and chose 3 colours for each petal (which means 2 gradient points), and that multiplied the effort by two...


It was actually a bit tiring for my thumb to continue squeezing the little bottle, and I needed to take short breaks towards the end because my thumb was quivering from exhaustion 😂 I might have gotten a paint bottle that had less paint left, or had a thicker texture that made it harder to squeeze? At some point, I was using my other hand to apply pressure to do the squeezing just to give my right thumb a break! But looking at the final piece at the end, it all feels like it is worth it




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