How to Repaint a China Teapot and Make it Dishwasher Safe!

I was excited to attend the Ladies Tea for the first time at our church. They were asking for people to volunteer to make some food for the event which is how this whole thing started. I emailed asking what food they needed only to be asked to decorate a table. Having never attended this event, I had no clue what to expect or how the other tables would look. I asked for more guidelines and hit two large hitches. I needed to provide my own china and 2 teapots among lots of other things. I don’t own china or 2 teapots. I emailed a lot of the girls here in the area I knew and found one lady willing to let me borrow her china, but no one I knew had one, let alone two teapots.

So I looked online, all over Huntsville including goodwill and ross. I eventually found a thrift store new our home where I found these two beauties for under $20. Needless to say, I knew these wouldn’t match the china that I was borrowing.

After lots of research and very few tutorials online, I found that this paint was the best because it has more opaque coverage and after being baked, it is dishwasher safe.

So I put down some newspaper, washed and dried the pots, and used regular paint brushes to paint this china according the label.

Here on the first coat you can see the brush marks.

Then you let it dry for 24 hours.

Place it in a cold oven, then heat to 300F, and bake for 35 minutes. Then turn off the oven without opening the door; if you open the door or place the china in a hot oven it can make the china shatter. Once the oven was completely cool inside, I opened the door and took out the china.

I noticed a few bubbles in my haste to paint the first coat that didn’t go away, and since I didn’t want to be doing 3 coats, I decided to give it a textured look with one of these cheap foam brushes.

Here are the tops after the second coat.

It was pretty much like sponge painting them and trying to get a similar texture over the whole thing.

Let air dry for 24 hours, and then do the whole baking and cooling process again according to the directions on the bottle.

Here is a close up of the texture.

And both of them done, I would estimate it took around 2 hours of actual painting time for the two coats, but to me it was well worth it. I now have two teapots for future events.

Here is a sneak peek at part of my table at the ladies tea, more pictures to come of that later.

Let me know if you have any questions on this process.