Sharpie Plate

The baking sharpie on cheap mugs idea has been all over Pinterest, so when I needed a cheap gift for a White Elephant exchange, I decided to give it a shot.  I picked up a plain white square plate at a local Dollar Store and found a stash of colored Sharpies in my cupboard at home.  Actually, it turns out that they weren't Sharpies--they were Bic permanent markers, which I wasn't even aware existed.  I also bought a foam dinosaur hat to include with the gift, but that's not really related to this.

Everyone involved in the gift exchange is a U of M alumni (Go Blue!), so I thought that would make a perfect theme for the plate.  Especially since I can't draw or do anything remotely artistic.  I was pretty much limited to words, which was a challenge in and of itself because my handwriting is certifiably horrible.

I started by trying to freehand draw the block M logo.  It didn't work out so well.  Like I said above: I can't draw to save my life.  Instead, I traced off of my laptop screen onto a piece of paper and cut it out.  You can see my little stencil in the picture below.  I then traced it into the center of the plate in blue and squiggled it in with yellow.

Sometimes when you're writing the same thing (with two very similar parts) over and over again and are surrounded by noisy people, you get distracted and accidentally write the wrong verse.  Instead of having a panic attack, just get some rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip and it will erase like magic.  Probably.  I learned while making another project that this doesn't work quite as well with some Sharpie colors.  Moral of the story: try not to mess up.

I copied the fight song many, many times onto the plate.  As luck would have it (I promise you that it was through no planning or skill), I had exactly the right amount of room to finish a whole verse neatly at the bottom.  Yay!  It's also worth noting that the writing at the top is much thinner than the writing at the bottom because the marker I was using was brand new and its tip got gradually smashed down as I wrote.  It gives it a kind of cool effect that I rather like.

All that was left was to bake it for 30 minutes at 350.  It looked pretty good when I took it out of the oven, so hopefully the marker stays permanent.  I kind of didn't want to give it away, but I managed to part with it. PS. Our oven doesn't usually look that gross, but we had just done an auto clean cycle and hadn't bothered to clean up the ashes.  Oops.