Etsy Labs: Hand-Painted Teacups With LoucheLab

I have been a naughty blogger and Etsy seller these past few weeks.  I've been super busy with random home projects, work, and keeping up with my social life.  Luckily I have managed to fit in a couple Etsy Labs here and there, so all is not lost!

The girls and I went a few weeks back for the hat lab, which didn't have a great outcome since most of us didn't know how to use a sewing machine.  We mostly sat there and cut out a bunch of patterns for an hour or so.  Im sure from the pictures you can see the excitement in our faces. 

 Then two weeks ago we attended the hand-painted teacup lab with Aya Rosen.  We absolutely loved this lab, I'm going to have to say it was the best lab yet!  Also, I think this was our most social lab as we even made some new friends at our table.  They had a cute little table set up with several types of teas, desserts, and small take home books about tea history and provided us with really awesome tea and espresso cups to decorate. Hooray Etsy labs!

So we basically took a normal ceramic tea cup and drew our designs on with Pebeo Porcelaine 150 markers and paint.  The markers were great as you could wipe off mistakes easily and start over.  They provided us with several books on birds to help give us design ideas.  I had my new Moo.com business cards with me, so we spread them out on the table and used them as inspiration. When we were done with our designs we let the ink dry a little bit.  The ink set in a pretty short amount of time so they were easy to travel home with.  Once the piece was how you wanted it, you would bake it in the oven at 300°F to set the paint.  I still haven't decided if I am finished with mine, so it has yet to be baked.

Click here for step by step instructions on how to make your own hand-painted teacups.