It’s eggs-citing – Decorate your own egg cups

I always see amazing Sharpie crockery ideas on Pinterest and fancy making them.  If you’re like me, you have tonnes of pins, and no time to actually make the item.  But in the case of decorating mugs or plates with Sharpies, I was definitely up for trying that.

Rather than mugs – we have too many of those, I decided that I’d do egg cups instead, after having soft boiled eggs to find we had no egg cups in the house. If you fancy trying to decorate your own egg cups, then read on.

Amazingly I managed to order some cheap white egg cups in my online shop and already had a good stash of Sharpies (edit – seems that they should be oil based, mine aren’t!).  My advice is that you should always buy if you see packs on offer, as you never know when you’ll need them.  I had heard mixed views on the success of using Sharpies on china, but I was willing to give it a go.  Unless I managed to smash the egg cups, I wasn’t going to lose out as I’d just wash off and use them plain.

How to decorate your egg cup

1. Make sure your egg cup is clean and dry
2. Decide your pattern.  I wanted to try a simple one with N’s name, and then a second in a rainbow/ombre effect.  Well, I was hoping the latter would work.
3. Use your Sharpies to decorate and wait several hours to help dry.
4. Put the piece in the oven at a low temperature for as long as you want (a couple of hours at least)

I did the first one with N’s name on and then a simple blue pattern with a shadow effect.

The second one I wanted a ‘blended’ in rainbow pattern.  Drawing a straight line around an egg cup is an interesting skill, so I did it by turning the egg cup upside down, and working up to the top.  I rested my hand with the pen against the egg cup and then turned the egg cup with my other hand.  A perfectly straight line wasn’t necessary, but this worked well enough.

I used each colour in turned, blending over with the lighter colour to combine across the join in colour.  I then left to dry off for a bit.

Then it was into the oven for a bit.  We have the Aga, so I put them in the cooler bottom oven for an hour.  That didn’t work as the rainbow one had tea towel smudges when I removed it.  I redid the colour, and then popped them back in again for a few hours.  The guidance I’ve seen on pinterest seems to be remove when the colour changes.  The plainer one seems fine (and yes, the colour did change a bit), the rainbow one has definitely taken longer, and I’m still a little wary of it.

I really should remember back to my pottery painting days – I remember being on a work social where the wine was flowing as we painted plates (yes, bit of an odd work do, but it was actually great fun and provided a lot of laughs).  I tried to cover the whole mug, and when I got it back I was disappointed as the more paint you try to use, the worse it looks.  I did really love my rainbow egg cup, it looks great.  But I think too much sharpie means it’s harder to ‘set’.  You need to remember that they can’t go in the dishwasher and I’d suggest being careful when washing too.  At least with egg cups, they’re unlikely to get really messy (unless you have really messy soldiers and runny egg situations going on.

I’m really pleased with them both.  I have 2 more egg cups left to play with so just need to decide what I want to decorate them with.

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I’ve now gone back and had a proper read of other instructions.  The Sharpie decorating advice is:

• leave to dry for 24 hours before baking
• use oil based Sharpies* if you want to dish washer them
• wash crockery (cheap ones) with alcohol rub first
• put decorated crockery in a cold oven then heat to low, when at temperature leave for 45 minutes, then turn off oven keeping them inside until oven is cold.  So, no using an Aga (oops), unless you’ve got a swanky new electric on that you turn on and off as needed!)

Have you ever tried to decorate your own egg cups or other crockery with Sharpies?  What was your experience?

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