Painting Unglazed Ceramic Tiles

[jjderoy1]

Previously I had engraved on unglazed tiles for use as coasters and all was well. The grey color of the engraved part was okay as a color and it worked as a coaster.

Fast forward to today, I tried to paint an unglazed tile that I had masked and engraved a gloss black from a rattle can, It seems that they are so absorbent they sucked the paint past the masking at the top level and I cannot get any crisp clean lines. I have done this before on marble for trivets and coasters and it worked just fine.

Is there a method or particular type of paint or different masking that I can use on the unglazed ceramic that won’t leech past the masking tape? Oh, and the tape was applied with some force and using a hard roller to ensure that it made good contact all over the surface.

Thanks

[eflyguy]

Yes. Coat in a clear first, after engraving. That will prevent the color from soaking into adjacent areas.

Same applies to wood.

It will take some experimenting on the tile you have, as with any other materials.

[jjderoy1]

Excellent, I will give that a shot!

[ChristyM]

Unglazed tile is extremely porous. It’s nothing like marble, but I guess you know that now.

[cjldvm]

Same question here, but my unglazed tile is for coasters. Seems applying clear coat will remove the absorbent properties. Is there any other way to darken the engrave or paint it without covering up the unglazed (absorbent) part of the tile?

[evansd2]

You could paint first, then try to engrave the unwanted paint away with a negative?

I don’t have a great deal of faith in this method but maybe?
It’s a good method on many materials, though I have never tried it on unglazed ceramic, nor have I seen any posts where anyone else tried it. Not saying it hasn’t been done but I just can’t recall.

Examples of this method are all oevr the forum for materials like

Painted metal:

Custom Altoids tin

My friend makes these neat silicone anatomical hearts in black altoids tins, and I bought one to engrave the top for Valentine’s Day for my husband! [image] I did a couple test runs on the back of it, and none of them turned out great… Not perfect, but I’m proud of myself for figuring out the settings to get the front pretty decent! It’s the first time I’ve ever done manual settings

Anodized aluminum:

Fooling with aluminum cards and tags

One of my neighbors has a sign with a catchy maxim on it so I thought I’d make a neighborhood card and tag for fun. [image] Both are double sided, those are front and back respectively. I got the materials from https://theringlord.com/ and I’m fairly pleased with the way they turned out. I will say that the material edges are a bit rough. The ring lord is very inexpensive, you can see why when you get your order. I’d order from them again but only for things where you don’t need top quali…

Canvas:

Further Experiments in Canvas

I spent most of Sunday and a few hours today playing around some more with canvas. Here are my results. The first canvas started out like this: [IMG_5479] And using an old B&W photo from my younger days, I got this: [IMG_5487] I played around with a few things and did the Orion Nebula from a nasa shot. The inverted photo looked like this: [Sound-Bath-Orion- 8 by 10 Inverted] The lasered canvas turned out like this: [IMG_5483] I went back and dotted in the stars with a silver sharpie. …

Cardstock (sort of. engrave away the color to reveal the white core):

Engraved cardstock fun times

I had a pack of double-sided white-core cardstock from ages ago and never got around to trying it out. Well, I’ve tried it now, and I love the result! [image] The paper has a slight woven tooth to it, which comes through beautifully when lasered. [image] Really pleased with the quality. Hard to believe this was made with a glowforge. [image] Worth mentioning: The vertical banding is not in the art. I suspect it’s down to variations in the paper, thickness of the color layer, changing…

Even wood:

Hello Stained, meet unstained!

So there has been discussion on laser-safe wood finishes and lasering finished woods. I will leave that discussion to another conversation already in the forums. Suffice it for here that caution is HIGHLY advised. Just wanted to show you what high speed, low power does on stained wood. All these were done in several passes, for various reasons. You burn away stained wood without darkening the wood underneath. [22087] [84765] [24482] [471222] [495698] Then I put a little oil and wax o…

And probably other materials too that I’m forgetting.

As for doing this with glazed ceramic, there are a number of techniques people have used, like the norton method:

White tile painted black with wood frame

Been doing a lot of white tile painted black Norton Method and learning how to use GIMP along with Inkscape for photo editing. It’s been a process, I’ve learned a lot and it’s been fun using this thing. I do wish it had a deeper depth so I could engrave larger objects though. Wish I could do cups and things of that nature. [20210921_185520_remastered] [20210922_212646_remastered] [20210922_111448_remastered] [20210921_113254_remastered] [20210920_200924_remastered] [20210922_202702_remaste…

Or engraving paint away but not revealing the finished tile below:

Rainbow painted tile settings

Rainbow tiles Started with white tile I spray painted the rainbow colors first and let it dry. Putting thick layers of paint will give you more wiggle room. You can see in the white tile on the lower right “E” that I was too thin with the red paint and it ate through to the tile. Then I did another spray paint top coat of white (or silver) and let that dry. (The bottom pic with the paint cans is what it looks like prior to adding the top coat.) I lasered off the very thin top layer of whit…

Painted tile

I saw this technique on Facebook, and figured eh what the heck worst case I toss a 19 cent tile and a bit of paint away… First off learned the hard way don’t let paint dry outside on sub freezing temperatures. It bubbles. But again this was only a test piece and I figured what the heck I only wanna see if it works. [20200121_153721] Short answer, yes, yes it does

Maybe the type of paint matters?

Ceramic Tile + Paint

This Tree of Life graphic has become my go-to for testing out new ideas. [20180531_203823] I got a box of 100 ceramic 4x4" tiles from Home Depot, mispriced at $0.01 for the entire box! Masked the tile Engraved the graphic Spraypainted the tile with Rustoleum’s gun-metal paint + primer Unmasked Cleaned up Awesome Jack (not Christine)

You know the more I think about this the more I think it’ll work. You do get decent depth with tiles:

Ceramic Tile Etched and Paint Filled

Made this ceramic tile and paint filled it gold. Thought it came out nice.! Still trying to establish my setting s on a lot of non proof grade materials.20190901_153934|375x500 [20190901_153944] [IMG_20190901_154312_044] [IMG_20190901_154441_758]

Anyway, experimenting is half of the process here. Have fun!

[donnalynn829]

OMG… Thank you for sharing these pictures. Care to share the settings you used for the tree on wood?

[evansd2]

Sorry, not my project. It was @jason.fuller0, maybe he’ll be able to comment.

I also believe @shogun has had some success with engraving stain off wood, maybe he’ll have some insight.

[jason.fuller0]

Sorry, not been watching my alerts. I tried looking, but I’m not sure which settings I used for that. Based on notes, it was 1000 speed, somewhere between 10 and 20 on power, possibly more than one pass. Was going for removing material not causing char, so don’t want too light or too heavy on the power.