IT was my daughter's sixth birthday recently and we had an arty party at home to celebrate. Twelve girls came and they had a number of arty projects that they could complete. One of these activities was to decorate a mini porcelain cup using either stickers or pens. I therefore had to look in to buying some 'porcelain pens' so I went to my trusted yellowmoon.org website. I could choose between a fine tip set, a pearlised set or a brilliant set. I opted for the brilliant porcelain pen set as they looked the most bright and colourful and they also had the description of being 'probably the best porcelain pens on the planet!'

There are six different coloured pens in the set - black, green, red, orange, yellow and blue. These are apparently all filled with high gloss water-based liquid paint. They are described as porcelain pens but they can also be used on glass or metal thus making them quite versatile.

Each pen has instructions on its side in English, French and German. However, this is very small print so you might need a magnifying glass in order to read what they say. The most important thing though is to give each pen a really good shake before using, presumable to get it flowing and to provide a very good consistency. You then need to press the pen down on paper until the colour starts to appear - some little people might begin to get a bit impatient but this really doesn't take very long.

Although it looks like you are using a pen, it is paint and you do have to be careful. You only need a very light touch to start drawing your patterns and if you press too hard the paint is likely to spread too much. Also, there is the danger of the odd drip. However, with a light touch, these pens do work very well on the porcelain surface and have a reasonable coverage. It is possible to use them for some quite delicate fine lines as well as filling in some larger areas. The advice is also to leave four hours for the paint to dry when you have finished but we actually found that it seemed to dry much quicker than this. We did also get some small spillages on little fingers but there was no difficulty in washing this off the skin. I'm not sure how well clothing would fare with this paint though so my advice would be to wear an apron and to be very careful!

I thought the pens were quite expensive at £10.49 for the pack of six. However, none of them seem to be showing any sign or running out yet which is good, although you cannot tell how much paint is left. Also, I was impressed to notice, that having put these pens away after the party and not used them for a few weeks, they had not dried at all and were just as easy to get started as the first time. I was pleased that I bought them because I wanted to have the right equipment, but at that price we will be using them sparingly!