Teapot Makeover

I've been wanting a decorative teapot for more than a year. I'll be honest I didn't look very hard for one, and the few that I did see online were too expensive for my budget, I had mom on the look for one at yard sale, bit then I saw this one on a local facebook swap shop page. It cost me $2 and while I wasn't even sure what I would want to do with it, I couldn't pass it up.

This teapot then proceeded to sit on top of my bookshelf for months. Untouched and totally not my style. Lately I've been in a crafty mood so I decided to take a crack at it. At Wal-Mart I found these Folk Art enamel paints and I thought I'd give them a try. Telling myself that if I screwed it up, I was really only out a few dollars. Our store didn't have a lot of enamel color options, but white and gold are the perfect colors to match my bedroom anyway.

I started painting the whole thing white, at this point I wasn't sure what design I wanted to go with, so I just started with a base coat. This is it after one coat, at the point when I realized I was going to be getting several coats deep into it.

After 4 coats, which I know doesn't seem like a lot (but it felt like it), it was a nice white. I waited 30-60 minutes between each coat. The bottle says 1 hour between coats, I have a hard time following rules.

After the white coat had died (or dried enough) I started decoarating with gold accents. I'm not an artist and I don't have a super steady hand, so it's not perfect, but I'm happy enough with it! This is what it looked like before I baked it:

I let it sit for an hour (for real) and then as per the instructions on the bottle, put it in a cold oven and baked it at 350 for 30 minutes. I also let it cool in the oven. I'm pretty happy with the results!

It goes nicely with this little teacup I got as a wedding favor!

Notes: Baking the paint makes it top-rack dishwasher safe (according to the bottle), but not food safe. I can't validate this, because I won't have a reason to wash it. Baking it cures it, but does nothing else. It should come out of the oven looking exactly as it did when you put it in. After baking I touched up a lot of the gold where you could see brush strokes. It will also cure after 21 days so I will not be putting it back in the oven.