Other Art 6: Fruit Mug

Fruit Mug

Created at 'All Fired Up' - a pot painting place

April 2015

I made this mug for my mom for mother's day. I wanted to incorporate some fruit (since our kitchen has a lot of fruit pictures and things), and the bordering that is on our china (Mikasa Italian countryside). I had a bunch of fun planning and making this (so there are a lot of pictures...).

Note: I had to do a lot of planning since I would have less than two hours to choose a mug, draw, and paint everything! (And after choosing my mug I ended up having only around an hour to do everything but I got it all done!!!)

Enjoy!

Planning the fruit layout and thinking about how I am going to paint them. Using glazes at the pottery place is totally different from painting with acrylics. I had only done this once before (with the Dragon Bowl), so I still didn't quite understand how to use the glazes.

Originally I was going to make a plate.

 And then I wanted to make another bowl. Notice I wanted the inside to be rings of colors which I ended up adapting to the mug.

Finally I was able to convert my design into a mug. The fancy border is adapted from the Mikasa Italian countryside china.

 I made a layout of my design and tried to figure out my colors.

 This is the border color scheme I ended up choosing, but I wish I would've went with a darker green in the stripes, but I wasn't sure how the yellow would look over a darker green since I wasn't sure how the glazes would act.

 Before being fired up!

 I tried to add a border around the lemon last minute so it didn't fade into the border.

 Note: the names around the rim are my families (since it's a mother's day mug but I didn't exactly want to write 'Happy Mother's day' - I just wanted to make it cute and something my mom would like) [though in retrospect I wish I would've at least written happy mother's day on the bottom]

Frankie is my puppy.

Inside.

Final mug! Note: since I was rushing I only did two layers of glaze instead of the recommended three so my mug was a bit blotchier than I expected it to be but I'm still quite happy with it. Also note the shadows on the orange needed to be much darker but I couldn't anticipate how layering the glazes would look... 

The handle for some reason turned out really nice even though I definitely only put two layers of glaze...

The inside was pretty blotchy but you can't really tell in the picture. But that part doesn't matter as much as the outside at least.

Overall this was a super fun project, and it makes me want to paint more mugs and bowls and things!!! I had a blast and I hope my mom is enjoying her mug! Happy Mother's Day!!! :D