DIY Tuesday: Hot Pots

This is the cheapest and easiest DIY ever. Ever, I say! 

So lots of these pinterest posts about drawing on sharpie and sticking it in the oven have been popping up lately. This is supposed to make it super permanent and food safe.

 I call BS. LIES I SAY! I call BS on a lot of pinterest pins, usually I can look them up to prove my skepticism. This was no exception. I looked it up and this lovely lady did the research for me.

 http://dsmartin.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/sharpies-on-ceramics/

TL;DR: 

She tested a bunch of markers by writing on a tile then baking them. They all sucked, but the silver sharpie and regular sharpie did OK. Took heavy scrubbing to get them off. And I seriously doubt the food safe aspect of any sharpie/food contact. 

I knew that I wanted to make some trivets, and this method would be perfect. They are not going to be submersed in water, scrubbed or abused in any way. They might get wiped off if some food gets spilled on them. No biggie, not enough to take off the baked on marker judging by the above post. 

So I went to Home Depot and grabbed some plain white tiles for 48 cents a pop. Everything else I already owned, so this project cost just under 4 dollars. Winning. (Yep, just Charlie Sheen-d it up in here.)

I knew that I wanted to messy scribble some mid century inspired  patterns on the tiles, so I pinned a bunch of patterns that spoke to me. 

I doodled on some paper so that I could have an idea of how I was going to draw these patterns. I didn't worry about making them perfect, I wanted them to look kinda nuts. I'm nuts, so naturally my trivets need to match that. 

Then I took a deep breath and scribbled on my tiles.

 It was fun, except I'm left handed and I forgot to be careful about smearing a couple of times. You would think that I would have learned that by now. But the sharpie just wipes off or scrapes off easily. 

MOM- It's my hand! (My mom likes seeing my hand on the blog)

Then I put them in a COLD oven, turned it to 350 and left it on for 30 minutes once it was pre-heated. Then I turned it off and let them cool for a long time--overnight since I am lazy bones. 

They look great and the sharpie seems really baked on there. Time will tell.

 I then cut out some felt squares out of some jewel toned felt and hot glued them on the back of the tiles. Done and done! I like how you can see the felt peeking out from underneath, but they look crisp and high contrast from the top. 

I also like the way they look stacked in the cabinet. It's the little things.