DIY Sharpie Plate

Looking for a quick and easy homemade gift? DIY Sharpie Plate is a quick and easy craft that you can make for yourself or someone special. 

When it comes to gift giving, I love homemade presents. Those crafty, one-of-a-kind presents make the gift extra special. When the holiday season was approaching, I was trying to think of a fun project for me and my three-year-old daughter. I wanted to create something beautiful that we could give to her grandparents as a gift.

After seeing a bunch of Sharpie decorated items on Pinterest (like here, here, and here), I wanted to make our own version. Since I was working with a three-year-old, we decided to design a DIY Sharpie Plate. This way, the grandparents could display it in their Dining Room 0r somewhere else in their house.

Before I get into any of the details, I will say that I was a little hesitant to use a permanent marker with a three-year-old. She’s never used one before and I had no idea how it would turn out. We usually use crayons, or the mess free markers, let alone the washable ones.

To make our DIY Sharpie Plate as mess free as possible, I purchased a pair of black toddler winter gloves (even though they look a little navy blue in the picture below). They’re the simple, black knit kind. Thin enough that my daughter could wear them while using the marker.

So, while working on our project, I never worried that my daughter’s hands would be covered in permanent ink. Each time the marker slipped and dabbed a smudge of black ink on her hand, the gloves picked up the slack. Her hands stayed clean and the gloves never showed any wear because, like the ink, they were also black.

Making a DIY Sharpie Plate was actually mess free! There was nothing, not a single dot of the marker anywhere. All that was left behind when she took off her gloves was a little bit of glove fuzz. Hooray!! An art project with a toddler and no serious clean up, this project was a huge success!

To make our DIY Sharpie Plate as toddler-friendly as possible, we decided to first design them with painters tape. This way, we could plan out our design before using anything permanent. My daughter and I laid out each piece of tape. We made sure it was evenly placed and there weren’t any air bubbles or raised areas.

You can see in the picture below that we used green painters tape. Everything that’s covered by the tape would stay white and the exposed areas would be coloured with the sharpie.

Since we were colouring sections of the plate, we used a thick Sharpie marker. I’m so happy we did. With an angled tip on one side and a thick section below, it was so easy to colour in each part of the plate.

When we painted (or coloured) the plates, we worked like a two-person assembly line. My daughter would start us off. She’d colour and scribble in her section. When she was done, I’d fill in any exposed areas, making sure it was evenly covered.

Before baking the DIY Sharpie Plates, we let them dry completely (which only took a few minutes). Then, we carefully removed the painter’s tape. Following the advice from this post, I placed the plate in a cold oven and let the temperature raise to 250 F (120 C) before setting the timer for 2 hours.

The house gets pretty stinky while the DIY Sharpie Plate bakes. So we made sure the house was well ventilated. I opened the two kitchen windows on either side of the oven and had the oven fan set to high.

Once the plates finished baking, I let them cool completely in the oven overnight. The next morning, the plates were done and they looked better than ever. Before baking, the black sections were matted and had a freshly painted look. After baking, the entire plate had a beautiful sheen. The Sharpie ink seemed to bake right into the enamel of the plate, giving it a professionally glazed appearance.

I love how the DIY Sharpie Plates turned out. Each plate has a real one-of-a-kind appearance. I love how at first, all of the lines are crisp and clear. If you look closely, you can see that the black lines lightly bleed into the white areas. It makes the plates look perfectly homemade.

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