Back to School Personalized Plates

And that my friends is why I'm not allowed to start a book unless I have NOTHING going on.  After telling you about the new Harry Potter series, I thought I would check out the first little bit to see if I'd actually like it...well, I got hooked.  I ended up reading the whole book and starting on the next one.  I'm so bad that way.

Luckily, I had a deadline on my Back to School party so I came out of Hogwarts to make a few last minute decorations.  I've seen directions on how to personalize your own plates on Pinterest, so I knew I wanted to try them for my dinner party.  And I'm so excited to say how well and easy they worked.  The possibilities are endless and I can already see fun Christmas gifts for all my family this year.

I started with a yellow plate from Walmart and an idea of what I wanted.  I used a dry erase marker to test out my design and make sure it worked.  I wanted a ruler theme, so I used the dry erase marker to mark out my lines to make sure they were even.

Once I was sure of how it all lined up, I used a black sharpie to make my ruler lines.  Then I went back and wiped off the dry erase marker.

I loved how the ruler design turned out, but I felt like my plate needed a little something extra.  I thought it would be cool to used colored sharpies to draw an apple or something fun in the middle, but decided to go with a personalization.  I drew lines to look like a writing tablet and added each of my kid's names in the center of the plate.  (Again, I did it first in dry erase to make sure I got it even and liked how it looked.)

Then I baked my plate at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  I don't know if you need to put it on a cookie sheet, but I decided to do it just to be safe.

I let the plate cool for 20 minutes and then checked it.  I noticed I had not erased all of the dry erase markers in spots, but they wiped right off even after being baked.  But the design I made in sharpie stayed with no smearing or rinsing off.

I'm so excited about how these turned out.  I am a sucker for plates for every holiday and this is a cheap fun way.  You can make them for different holidays, as gifts, as a special plate for a birthday...the ideas are endless!