Surface and decoration

Applying Pottery Inks to Finished Pottery

Prisme, the enamel colors and the glass colors all go on a pot that is already finished, and none of them sees a kiln. Two cure in a kitchen oven at 300 F and one only ever air dries. They are the answer when you want color on a pot that is already out of the kiln, and each one comes with its own limits.

Three different products, three different rules. Enamel bakes at 300 F and survives the top rack of a dishwasher. Glass color stays transparent, and its label gives its own bake. Prisme air dries into a honeycomb and never gets baked hard. None of them is food safe.

No kiln, a kitchen oven Six videos, none of them ours Outside tables only
The three products, quickly The baking rule that cracks pots Outside tables only
Illustration of a potter painting teal ink onto a white vase with a fine brush, with dropper bottles of ink and a marbled, colored vase on the bench
Jump to a section
The studio rule, first Why this page reads and watches The three products, and what each is for What to put them on Putting them on Prisme, which behaves differently Baking, and the rule that cracks pots What goes wrong What you can claim afterward The whole idea, quickly The route that works Three things that ruin it The bench checklist Questions we get asked Keep going

Three products, what each one is for, how to bake them, and what none of them can claim.

Before anything else

Outside tables only

None of this happens inside the studio. The enamel colors, the glass colors and Prisme are solvent based and smell strongly, the markers are water based, and none of them is fired. They go on the tables outside, and they dry out there too. Wear nitrile gloves and eye protection whenever you pour, thin or paint with them, and keep thinner and alcohol away from flames and sparks. A half face respirator with organic vapor cartridges is the right gear for the vapor, because a dust mask does nothing against it.

The baking is a different question again. It needs a kitchen oven, which we do not have, so that part happens at home.

The water based version of the enamel colors exists and is much milder, and it is still an outside job here, because the rule is about what gets used in a shared room rather than about any one bottle.

The whole idea

Three products, three different answers

People say "pottery inks" as if it were one thing. It is three, and mixing up their rules is where the wasted afternoons come from.

  1. Enamel color. Opaque, lacquer-like, the workhorse. Air dries, then bakes at 300 F for 35 minutes and becomes genuinely durable.
  2. Glass color. Transparent, made for light coming through it, and its label gives its own bake. Use it where you want the glaze underneath to still show.
  3. Prisme. The honeycomb effect. It air dries into cells all by itself, needs days to fully cure, and never becomes hard. Decorative only, and the maker gives it no baking step.

Not one of the three is food safe.

Start to finish

The route that works first time

Eight steps, the bake at home and the rest on the outside tables, using the enamel colors on a glazed pot.

Pebeo Porcelaine 150 Paint Blick Art Materials
  1. Take it outside. Paints, thinner, rags, all of it. Nitrile gloves and eye protection on, thinner and alcohol away from flames, and a half face respirator with organic vapor cartridges for the vapor.
  2. Wipe the pot with rubbing alcohol and let it dry. Color crawls off a greasy glaze.
  3. Mask the rim and anything food touches. It is not food safe and the tape takes a minute.
  4. Stir, do not shake. The color settles in the bottle and shaking puts bubbles in it.
  5. Paint deliberately and stop. These do not like being reworked. Lay the color and leave it rather than going back over a drying edge.
  6. Build opacity in layers, letting each one dry, instead of loading one thick coat.
  7. Let it air dry 24 hours. Not optional. Baking a wet coat traps solvent and clouds it.
  8. Bake it in a cold oven. Put the pot in, turn it on to 300 F, give it 35 minutes from temperature, then turn the oven off and let the pot cool inside it. Cold pot into a hot oven is how pots crack.
If it went wrong

Three things ruin nearly every piece

The pot went into a hot oven

Thermal shock. A cold glazed pot dropped into a preheated oven can crack or, at worst, come apart. It goes in cold, heats with the oven, and cools inside it with the door shut.

You reworked a drying edge

These paints skin over fast and hate being touched once they start. Going back over a half-dry area drags it into ridges that bake in permanently. One pass, then leave it alone.

You baked it before it was dry

Twenty-four hours of air drying first. Heating a wet coat boils the solvent out through the surface and leaves it cloudy, bubbled or tacky forever.

How to use this page

Read the differences, watch the hands

Almost everything written about these products online treats them as craft paint, which is fine if you are decorating a dollar store plate and unhelpful if you are putting them on a pot you spent three weeks making.

So this page is organized around the three products and the one thing that actually differs between them, which is what happens after you put the color on. Six videos sit next to the sections they belong to.

This is the route for people who want color on a pot that is already finished, or who want effects no kiln can produce. If the piece is still unfired, underglaze will give you better color, permanently, with less fuss.

Know what you are buying

The three products, and what each is for

They sit next to each other on the shelf in nearly identical bottles, and they behave nothing alike.

Enamel color, the workhorse

Opaque, glossy, lacquer-like. Goes on almost any heat-stable surface: glazed pottery, porcelain, terracotta, glass, metal. Air dry 24 hours, then bake at 300 F for 35 minutes and it becomes permanent, solvent resistant and fine on the top rack of a dishwasher. This is the one to start with.

Glass color, the transparent one

Same family, built to let light through. Its bake can differ from the enamel colors, so follow the label. On a glazed pot it tints rather than covers, so the glaze underneath keeps doing its job. Layer it for depth. Use it where you want color without hiding the surface.

Prisme, the effect one

Opaque and solvent based, and it does something none of the others do: as it dries it separates into a honeycomb of cells. You do not make the pattern, the drying makes it. Air dry only, never properly hard, and it needs days to fully cure.

Markers

The enamel colors in pen form, and water based. Far better than a brush for lettering, outlines and fine lines, and they bake on the same schedule. The single easiest way into this whole category.

Outliner and relief

A thick paste in a nozzle tube that stands proud of the surface. Used to draw raised lines, or to build a dam that keeps two colors from running into each other. Bakes with everything else.

Thinner and gloss medium

The thinner revives a bottle that has thickened and cleans brushes. The medium extends a color and makes it more transparent without weakening the bake. Neither is essential on day one.

The water based option

There is a water based version of the enamel colors. It is much milder to work with, cleans up with water and bakes the same way. It is a good choice if the solvent smell is the thing putting you off. The color range is smaller and the finish is slightly less glassy.

Pebeo Painted Ceramics Encaustic Art with Jane Monteith Twelve and a half minutes. The first seven cover the materials and tools, then the painting starts, on plates and a vase.
Pebeo Porcelaine 150 Markers Blick Art Materials Blick’s short demo of the marker version. The description says they are water based and baked in a home oven.
Pick the right pot

What to put them on

Anything that will take 300 F without complaining, which is most of what comes out of our kilns and not all of it.

  1. Glazed stoneware and porcelain. The obvious home for this. Glossy glaze gives the crispest edges, matte gives a softer, more absorbed look.
  2. Bare bisque and terracotta. Both work. They are porous, so the first coat sinks in and the color reads duller. Plan on two or three coats.
  3. Not a piece with an overglaze on it. Gold and other lusters are a thin metal film, and baking paint over one risks lifting it. Decide which finish the pot is getting.
  4. Not a cracked or badly crazed pot. An oven cycle, even a gentle one, opens up existing flaws. If a pot has a crack, this is not the moment to test it.
  5. Nothing with metal fittings, cork or glued parts. Take them off first. 300 F is nothing for clay and plenty for glue.
  6. Clean first, always. Alcohol on a lint free cloth, then let it dry. Every fingerprint and every trace of kiln dust is a place the color will crawl away from.
The part with the brush

Putting them on

These reward a confident hand and punish fiddling. The single biggest change most people need to make is to stop touching an area once they have painted it.

  1. Stir rather than shake. The color settles and the effect particles in Prisme settle hardest. Shaking puts bubbles in that bake in as pits.
  2. One pass, then walk away. They skin quickly. Brushing back over a half-dry edge drags it into ridges, and no amount of later work smooths that out.
  3. Build opacity in layers, not in thickness. Two or three thin coats with drying time between them beat one heavy coat, which stays soft in the middle and bakes cloudy.
  4. Work small areas at a time on a curved pot, and turn the piece so you are always painting on a surface that is nearly level. Gravity pulls a wet edge downhill faster than you expect.
  5. Use the outliner to build dams where two colors meet and you want them to stay apart. It is the difference between a clean design and a bled one.
  6. Mistakes lift with thinner while wet, and with a scalpel once dry and before baking. After baking, what you have is what you have.
  7. Markers for anything fine. Lettering, outlines, dots, thin lines. A brush will fight you on all four.

The mistake nearly everyone makes first

Treating it like acrylic. Acrylic tolerates blending, reworking and pushing color around. These do not. They behave more like nail polish, and the people whose pieces look best are the ones who decided what the stroke was before they made it.

The odd one out

Prisme, which behaves differently

Prisme is the reason people go looking for this category in the first place, and it plays by none of the rules on the rest of this page.

How To Use Pebeo Prisme Fantasy To Get Cool Paint Effects Keepsake Crafts by Sandy Huntress Eleven and a half minutes on polymer clay rather than ceramic, with chapters on tips, practicing on old clay, and mixing and applying.
Pebeo Fantasy Prisme Paints Demonstration Jackson's Art Thirty seconds of a pipette putting paint onto a white surface.
  1. The pattern makes itself. Poured thickly and left alone, it separates as it dries into a honeycomb of cells. You control where it goes and roughly how big the cells are. You do not control the pattern.
  2. Thick is the whole point. Thin Prisme is just glossy paint. It needs a real pool of it to break into cells, which is why people apply it with a pipette or straight from the bottle rather than with a brush.
  3. A toothpick beats a brush. Bristles fight the surface tension the effect depends on. Push it around with a toothpick instead.
  4. Keep the pot level while it sets. On a curve it runs and pools at the bottom. Lay the piece so the painted area is flat and level, and leave it there while it sets. Keep Prisme to flat areas, because on a wall it runs.
  5. You cannot see the result while it is wet. The cells appear as it dries, over hours. Judging it early and adding more is the usual way people ruin it.
  6. It never gets truly hard. It looks cured long before it is, and even fully cured it dents and marks. Do not bake it to speed it up. The maker gives it no baking step, and heat is likely to spoil the effect.
  7. Layering works. A second Prisme color over a dry first one gives contrasting cells, and Prisme over the glass colors does something different again.

Where it belongs on a pot

Prisme is for pieces that get looked at rather than handled: a flat tile, the base of a decorative dish, the flat floor of a decorative bowl. Anywhere it can be touched regularly, it will eventually show a mark.

The curing step

Baking, and the rule that cracks pots

This part happens at home, in a kitchen oven. It is simple, and one detail in it is the difference between a finished piece and a broken one.

252 Dishwasher Safe Acrylic Pouring with Pebeo Porcelaine 150 McE Art A 36 minute pouring session with Porcelaine 150 on mugs. It has no chapters, so the drying and the bake are not marked.
How to use Pebeo Porcelaine 150 on Ceramic Hieu Le Trung A three minute marker demo on plates and tiles.
  1. Air dry 24 hours first. Not until it feels dry. Twenty-four hours. Solvent still in the coat has to leave before heat arrives.
  2. Put the pot in a cold oven. This is the rule. Clay and glaze do not like sudden temperature change, and a cold pot into a preheated oven is how a piece cracks or breaks.
  3. Set it to 300 F and start counting the 35 minutes from when the oven reaches temperature, not from when you turned it on. If the bottle’s label gives a different time or temperature, follow the label.
  4. Turn the oven off and leave the door shut. Let the pot cool inside, all the way. Pulling a hot pot out into room air is the same shock in reverse.
  5. Expect a smell. Open a window and run the exhaust fan. The smell is solvent vapor, not dust, and a dust mask or an N95 does nothing against it, so ventilation is the answer, and the smell passes. Keep thinner, alcohol and rags away from the oven and anything hot.
  6. Prisme does not get baked. The maker gives it no baking step, and heat is likely to spoil the effect. It air cures, and that is the only route.

After it is baked

The enamel and glass colors come out permanent, solvent resistant and fine on the top rack of a dishwasher. That is genuinely durable for a paint. What it is not is fired, so it is still a coating on a pot rather than part of one, and it will not survive a knife, a scouring pad or a very hot pan.

Read this after a bad one

What goes wrong, and what caused it

The pot cracked in the oven

It went into a hot oven, or came out into cold air. Thermal shock, and it is the only failure on this page that destroys the pot rather than the paint. Cold oven in, oven off and door shut on the way out.

The finish came out cloudy or bubbled

Baked before it was properly dry, or applied too thickly. Solvent trapped under the surface boils out during the bake. Twenty-four hours of air drying and thinner coats.

Ridges and drag marks

The area got worked after it started to skin. There is no fixing this after baking, and not much before. One confident pass per area is the technique.

The color crawled away from a spot

Oil or dust on the glaze. Wipe with alcohol, let it dry fully, and handle the clean pot as little as you can before painting.

Prisme never made cells

Applied too thin, or brushed out. The effect needs a real pool and it needs to be left alone. It also will not show while wet, so give it hours before you decide it failed.

Prisme lost its effect

It got baked. The maker gives Prisme no baking step, and heat is likely to spoil it. Air cure only, and be patient: it needs days, not hours, and Pebeo asks for at least 72 hours.

The colors bled together

Two wet areas touched. Either leave a gap, or let the first color dry fully, or lay an outliner dam between them before you start.

It scratched off in use

Even baked, it is a coating rather than a glaze. Knives, scouring pads and stacking will take it off. It goes on surfaces that are seen, not surfaces that get worked.

Before you sell it or gift it

What you can claim afterward

These sit in an awkward middle: much tougher than most craft paint, nowhere near a fired glaze. Being precise about that is what keeps a customer happy.

  1. Not food safe. The makers say to decorate only surfaces that will not touch food, and Prisme is sold as decorative only. So they stay off rims, off inside surfaces, off anything a mouth meets.
  2. Dishwasher safe, top rack, once baked. For the enamel and glass colors only, and only if you actually baked them. Prisme is not.
  3. Not microwave safe. Some of these colors carry metallic pigment, and none of them are designed for it.
  4. Not oven safe. Baking to cure is one 35 minute cycle. It does not make the pot a baking dish.
  5. No knives, no scouring. The surface scratches. Say so when the piece changes hands.
  6. Prisme is decorative only. Not washed, not handled, not near food. A panel to look at.

The one line version

A baked enamel piece is a decorated pot that can be washed. It is not a food surface and it is not a glaze, and any description that blurs those two is the one that comes back.

For the phone at the table

The bench checklist

The first list is for before you paint, the second for before the pot goes in the oven.

Before you paint

  • Working outside, gloves and eye protection on
  • Pot has no cracks or bad crazing
  • No luster or overglaze already on it
  • Cork, metal and glued parts removed
  • Wiped with alcohol and fully dry
  • Rim and food surfaces masked off
  • Bottles stirred, not shaken
  • Know which product is in my hand

Before it goes in the oven

  • Air dried a full 24 hours
  • No Prisme anywhere on this piece
  • Oven cold, pot going in now
  • 300 F, 35 minutes from temperature
  • Window open, exhaust fan running
  • Oven off, door shut, cooling inside
  • Nothing else in the oven with it
Questions we get asked

The ones that come up at the tables

Can these go in a kiln instead of an oven?

No. They cure at 300 F and burn away entirely long before a kiln reaches even bisque temperature. If you want color that gets fired, that is underglaze or, on a finished pot, an overglaze.

Can I use them inside the studio?

No. They are solvent based and they are not fired, so they belong on the outside tables along with the alcohol inks. The drying happens out there too.

Is a mug painted this way safe to drink from?

Only if the paint stayed off the rim and off the inside, and even then treat the mug as decorative. The makers say to decorate only surfaces that will not touch food. Mask the rim before you start.

Why did my pot crack in the oven?

Almost certainly thermal shock. A cold glazed pot into a preheated oven, or a hot one pulled out into room air. Put it in cold, let it heat with the oven, then turn the oven off and let it cool inside with the door shut.

Can I bake Prisme to speed it up?

You can, and you should not. The maker gives it no baking step, and heat is likely to spoil the depth that made you buy it. Prisme air cures, it needs days rather than hours, and there is no shortcut.

How do these compare to underglaze?

Underglaze wins on permanence, and on food safety when the clear glaze over it is one you have checked in the Food Safe Lookup, and it has to go on before the glaze firing. These win when the pot is already finished, when you want an effect no kiln produces, or when you want a color that cannot survive cone 5½.

Can I put them over a gold luster?

Better not to. Luster is an extremely thin metal film and baking a paint layer over it risks lifting it. Pick one finish for the piece rather than stacking them.

Is there a version that does not smell?

There is a water based version of the enamel colors. It is much milder, cleans up with water and bakes the same way, with a smaller color range and a slightly less glassy finish. It still gets used on the outside tables here.

One last thing

The right tool for a narrow job

These are not a replacement for glaze and they are not trying to be. What they are is one of the few ways to put color on a pot that is already finished without a third firing (alcohol inks are the other), and the only way to get a honeycomb of cells onto a ceramic surface at all.

So know which of the three is in your hand, mask the rim, let it dry a full day, and put the pot into a cold oven. Get those four right and the rest of it is just painting.

Enamel and glass colors bake at 300 F in a cold-start oven after 24 hours of drying. Prisme air cures and never gets baked. None of it is food safe, and all of it except the baking happens on the outside tables.

If you want the three products in full, the Prisme detail and the eight ways it goes wrong, switch to the Comprehensive Version at the top of the page.