I love your blog – thank-you for sharing your talents!

I have some questions I hope you might be kind enough to help me with. I am organizing a First Grade Art project where I am planning to decorate the border of a mirror with small (1″ square) tiles.
The tiles are blank and in bisque form (pottery fired once, but not shiny sealed). My plan is to have each class member print their thumbprint on a tile.

My questions are:

1. Do you think this will work?!
2. What ink should I use?
3. Which technique will get the best result? I was planning on painting
the tiles in a white acrylic and then doing the thumbprints in ink and then sealing with a gloss sealer of some kind. Should I use heat setting in the oven at any point?
Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated!!

Susan

Here’s my answer for Susan. I thought others might want to know this too. When the project is finished she’ll email me photos, and I’ll post them here.

First off, that will definitely work! I think that will look fantastic.
Before you take it to the classroom I’d suggest you try it out at home. I
believe you will have no problem.

I would suggest using a pigment ink, such as the craft ink from Stampin’
Up!. Originally I thought about using Stazon but upon reading that you plan
on the students using their fingers for the stamp I changed my mind. Stazon
is like a Sharpie- has a strong odor, would stain the skin for quite a
while, and I’m not sure I’d want my 4 year old using that on his skin.

Pigment ink is a good ink to use- if you do one child at a time, with a
healthy supply of babywipes on hand to clean their fingers right away-
before they touch their clothes, hair, your clothes, etc. It will probably
stain most clothing even without being heat set so don’t let them on their
own to stamp their fingers unless you have some helpers on hand to make sure
they wipe their fingers before continuing on to another student.

If you have a heat tool that will work to set them- hotter than a hair
dryer. You could also get away with leaving them in a sunny window to “set”
without heating them yourself. I know that the pigment inks won’t fade, and
because you’re not planning to wash the mirror in the washing machine you
shouldn’t need to worry about baking them.

A last step would be to seal them. I like Krylon Crystal Clear but my
husband recently pointed out that it is full of lead…so that’s no longer
my first choice. If you’ve ever used mod podge I’d try that first on your
practice run. 2 or 3 thin coats would be plenty.

That sounds terrific! I’d love to see a picture of your final classroom
project, and with your permission I’d also like to add that photo to my
blog.
Have fun! Enjoy!