This sink was done at a customers urging. The flowers are beautiful, but I have so many flower designs on the site, too many, so I discontinued these years ago. She wanted something in a certain shade of purple. After a few sample tiles, and a few actual design changes, from Daisies to Honeysuckle, we ended up with these purple Pansies. The sink is the Bates & Bates Suzanne, a really nice drop-in sink with a nice deep bowl, made in Oxnard California. In fact, I’m heading out there next week to get a van load of sinks (I can fit 32 in the back of a Dodge Grand Caravan). The company is Creations by Alno, Inc. and they purchased the factory of Bates and Bates a few years ago. At the factory, in Oxnard , California, they make all the sinks by hand and I’m just grateful I can buy them, and that they are so nice to me. I am super fussy and they let me check every one over to make sure they are perfect, because my customers deserve the best!!!!! If you only knew how much there was wrong with bathroom sinks these days, mostly from China. So many of them have the imperfections filled with resin, guess what? That fires away when they get heated up to 1500 degrees. So I’m left with a sink and a hole. So many have cracks, that you really can’t see with the human eye, and the final beef is with the black and sometimes blue or brown marks in the glaze. So many times I need to put a gold border on a sink and it has a big black mark on it. Back to the storage shelf and I make a note of where the imperfection is and save it for a design where I can cover the mark with a flower, so it can’t be seen. It doesn’t affect the wear or integrity of the basin, the black marks that is. The cracks certainly do, once the water and dirt start working their way in there, then you can see them. Once they are installed. Then you have to get a new sink, maybe then is the perfect time for a decorated SINK. Please check out our complete collection of painted and decorated sinks, toilets, tiles and accessories at decorated bathroom.com. –

Pansy Painted Sink Options

Thank goodness she chose the right hand side. She wanted the left originally but I knew it would be weird, for one thing it’s very hard to get all those little ones all over the bowl looking even and properly spaced, looks like it took five minutes, I wish… I took way longer, and everytime you turn one in a different direction, one right near it is going the same way, and so on, and so on…

Custom Purple Pansy Painted Sink

Here is the final product. I made a few different design choices for the customer and this is how she wanted it. I am always happy to do what you want, after 20 years in graphic design, my previous career, I realized a long time ago that’s always the best way forward. People should get what they want, at least sometimes!!!  I’m calling this sink Purple Pansy Painted Sink, original huh? I really do like it and am tempted to put it on the site but as I said, I already have too many designs. If you want one, please contact me for details, Lynne Sands, 702-897-8131, lynne@decoratedbathroom.com. The thing I like the most about this sink is the colors, deep shades of purple and lots of lovely olive-ish greens highlighted with the white, blue and yellow. Of course, the actual sink looks better than the photo, I am not a professional photographer, and sinks are hard to take photos of. Luckily, I’m ok at Photoshop, I wouldn’t say good anymore.

Custom Pansy Shower Tile

The customer also had me create some custom tiles to use in the shower surround. The are 6×6″ white porcelain field tiles that she supplied to me. She also figured out this design with the flowers, along with a friend who was good on the computer. Great for me, all I had to do was make them. She was renovating an old farm house and wanted to keep the renovation ‘period‘ looking. The Pansies are in shades of purple, with orange/yellow centers, green leaves and some other white and blue flowers to complement the color-scheme. If you prefer another type of pansy, I have another Pansy sink on the site with colors ranging from purple to blue and orange, they are more modern looking. Check it out here, Pansy Painted Vessel Sink.

Purple Pansies Painted Sink

Update, I made another Purple Pansy sink, this one with more flowers. The customer must have seen the sink on the blog or on social media somewhere and called and asked if I could make him one, but with more flowers and on this decorative Bates & Bates Julie in Porcelain sink. The outside of the sink measures 19 x 15″, I would classify that as a generous mid-size bowl. It has decorative fluting all the way around the bowl which made getting the flowers on there a bit of a challenge. They are ceramic decals, and when applying them it is absolutely necessary to get all the water out from underneath them which is really tricking in the recesses of all the fluting. I probably checked this sink ten times prior to firing it. Looking at the photo, trying to figure out what else to say… and the thought ‘it looks pretty good’ comes to mind. The photo isn’t too bad either.

However, this design, like so many of the designs I produce, will soon be discontinued. The company that makes these decals has been around for a really long time in the UK, Bailey Decal. Recently, they started printing everything in China, and using a different method. The old decals would be silk-screened with 6 or even more colors, the new ones don’t have as many colors, and as a result look ugly and, well, crap. Also, they bought the big German supplier, Leipold, and ruined all their designs as well by using the same process in China. This is a huge issue for me. Fortunately I have a silk-screener in the states who does custom jobs for me, they do all the gold. SDI Custom Decal. I trust them. I don’t trust Chinese crap. I know the decals I use have been manufactured using the same process for 100+ years, I know they won’t wear out or fade away. I took over this business from someone else, who had been doing if for 25 years. I know of sinks she did that are still in use 25 years later. Fortunately I was able to buy up everything i could find in my most popular design, the Scented Garden. I have enough to make about 150 sinks. That’s a few more years supply depending on how business is! After that, I am hoping that something will change with Bailey, get sold, or more like it too many customers will have complained and they will do a better job. And, another annoying thing, they sent me a bunch of really crap decals, and told me there were good, then they wouldn’t refund my money. They didn’t even want to take the return but after a couple of tries they did, I had to send them back to the UK at my expense, $75, then all they would do is to give me a credit for what I returned. I am a small business person, how about a refund?? I had to spend about $4000 buying up everything i could find from the original printings of many of my designs. Which reminds me, I better order what else I need from them while they are still good, before they run out of the originals and reprint in China. For a while, like back in the 90’s, stuff from China was great. Now, terrible. So many bathroom sinks come from China and they are total crap. Some are ok, but you never know until you try them. I try to use the US made Bates & Bates sinks whenever possible. You can’t get any better than made in the USA!!!

Since I am trying to get my word count up, let me just say that so many sinks come with cracks in them, I am sure consumers don’t see the until the sink is installed. I have to check over the sinks extremely carefully to make sure nothing is wrong with them. Usually I give them a pref-ire in the kiln, cause if there is something wrong, heating it up to 1500 degrees makes it really obvious! Many times I haven’t noticed the cracks until it’s too late, ie after I’ve already spend 10 hours making it. Most cracks

I really don’t like doing custom orders, they take too long, and sinks don’t always turn out perfect the first time, but I’m prepared to do them for the business and to satisfy my customers every desire to create the bathroom of their dreams with our painted sinks and toilets, made in the USA by me, Lynne, and for sale on my website,  decoratedbathroom.com. Thanks for reading. – Lynne