This Painted Initial Mug is a fun and easy gift idea!
Tis the season for gift giving, but the cost can easily add up and become overwhelming! Overwhelming is definitely the theme for this week, so I don’t have a ton of time to stop in to chat with all of you but I did one to share this fun entry level craft idea with you all. As a big fan of personalized touches, I love making handmade gifts for friends and family. This Painted Initial Mug is one of my favorites, especially because it’s super easy to customize for anyone’s personal preferences or style.
For this mug, I took 5 different color Paint Markers and a white mug. I like to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out stencils on vinyl for such projects, but you could use store bought stickers as a reference OR just free style. I’m a horrible freestyler. For this particular mug, I used a round stencil with the letter missing from the middle, that creates the empty space between the letter and the start of the circle.
You could also put the letter sticker down and have work your way out from there, which would make the letter the solid mug color and outlined by the dots. I did that when I made a mug for my friend Travis, using metallic paint markers on a black mug.
MATERIALS
- Paint Markers
- Vinyl for Stencils or ABC Stickers
- White mugs or black mugs are great places to start
- Rubbing Alcohol
TUTORIAL
Prep the mug by wiping it with rubbing alcohol and allowing it to dry.
Put the sticker in place for your desired design. You want a good seal on the edges of the sticker, so you might need to stretch the sticker a little to have it lay flat.
Choose one of your paint markers and start adding dots. I like to use different firmness when making the dots to have some be a little bigger and some be a little smaller. Don’t press too hard or it will puddle. I let the paint dry a little between colors so there is no bleeding and try to avoid putting a dot right on the sticker seem or it will bleed along the sticker edge. Keep going until you like the look.
Once you are happy with it, cover a baking/cookie sheet with parchment paper and place the mug on there. Put in a cold oven and set it to 350 F. Set a timer for 30 minutes. Once the 30 minutes is up, turn the oven off and let it sit until it and the oven have cooled. The subtle rising and lowering of the temperature is important to avoid glass or porcelain from shattering.
If you like this, you might like my other handmade gift ideas!
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