Koi Mugs and Adventures in Ceramic Paint

I've been busy these last few weeks designing and painting LOTS of mugs. I wanted to share this cute set with you and give you a little update on my trials and tribulations in the mug painting world. 

So far I've got the basic mug cleaning (rubbing alcohol ftw!) and painting portion down (sharpies!) but when it comes to keeping the paint ON the mugs I've been having all sorts of troubles. 

I have tried baking them at 250° for 2 hours, I have tried baking them at 350° for half an hour. Trouble is, when you bake them at 250° the paint scratches off and when you bake them at 350° they change colors! Ahhhh! 

I made the mistake of trying to spray the cow mugs with a light coat of spray sealant to get the paint to stay on permanently BUT the paint bled everywhere and became a huge, awful mess. It was terrible. They were completely destroyed. I barely recovered. (No pictures, it's too traumatic.)

SO I bought some Ceramic Mod Podge and will be trying that this evening. We'll see how it goes! In the meantime I've been redoing all of the Cow Mugs and designing a huge set o'themed mugs for my Step-Ma. 

I'll keep you updated on my progress and *hopefully* my fabulous Mod Podge based success stories. 

I'M GONNA FIGURE THIS OUT, GUYS! 

-Ashley