Sharpie Mugs

I have been wanting to do this project for a while now. It just never seems to make it to the top of the list. What is it you ask? I finally got around to making Sharpie Mugs. This is such a hot project right now. I've seen it all over Pinterest and YouTube. With my love of mugs and making things this was pretty much an inevitable project. I mean who doesn't want a custom coffee mug. Oh and let's just be honest, if this works out I'm going to have an entire Sharpie dish set at some point. Yes people...it will happen. 

I started with some research. I have seen quite a few variations on ways to do this. I use my mugs quite a bit so they not only needed to look cute, but also hold up *Crossing my fingers*. I started with 2 white mugs. I got mine from Target. Apparently the cheaper the mug the better. I ran them once through the dishwasher, and then wiped them down with alcohol to make sure they were clean of everything. Now I've been told that you can use regular Sharpies for this (which I may try at some point), but I decided to use the Sharpie Oil-Based paint markers. Lucky for me I just got 2 sets for Christmas. (Thanks Uncle Francis!)

 For the first mug I wrote one of my mottoes, love life. On the other side I added a cute girly emoticon to fill space. I didn't use any fancy tools or stencils for this. I just free-handed whatever came to mind. 

For the second mug I got a little artistic. I wanted to use all of the colors. I divided the mug into sections and did a different design in each one. I started by drawing everything out in black.

Then I used various colors to fill it in. 

I let both mugs sit for 24 hours before baking. Then it was time to cook. I placed both mugs on a baking sheet and put them in the oven. Then I turned the oven on to 425, and waited for it to fully preheat. Once that happened I turned the timer to 30 mins. Letting the mug warm up with the oven is key. You never want to put something like that in a really hot oven. The drastic change in temperature will cause it to crack. Once the 30 mins was up, I turned the oven off with the mugs still inside to let them slowly cool down. Again you don't want to pull them out right away for fear of the same drastic change in temperature. I don't remember how long I left them in there. It was about as long as it took me to walk away and remember that they were in there. 

When I took them out VOILA!

Uh, actually not so much. When I took them out of the oven I gave them the quick once over to marvel at my handy work. To my total disappointment the colors had changed. What the heck happened? I was slightly dumbfounded. The black and metallics were fine, but all of the colors had changed from what they were pre-bake. I never read anything about colors changing.

Her lips were originally red, now they are purple.

The colors of the multicolored one were all totally off .

 All of my bright colors seem to be muted and dull looking. I was quite pissed honestly. I'm big on bright colors, and this just wasn't going to do. So I took back to the wonderful internet. I picked the method I did because it seemed to be the one that worked best for longevity, and not chipping when washed. Apparently you could even put it in the dishwasher. Well after some research I learned that while 425 is effective in really setting the marker, it is too hot for the actual colors. Well that is good to know. However, it would have been even better to know this in the beginning. A better temperature for baking with colors is 350. So I set out to buy a new white mug to try again. However, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to put on the new one. So, I decided to just improvise with the one I already had. I went back in and added color to the white spots of the original.

Again I let it sit for another 24 hours. Then I put it back in the oven, this time at 350. Once it finished baking and cooled down, it looked like this

Look at that...it worked! I actually think it looks more interesting with the layered colors. So lesson learned. If I'm using black or metallics then 425 is cool, but if color is important than I will just set it at a lower temp and commit to hand-washing. I probably would have hand-washed anyway just to be cautious. I kind of like this mug thing. I may head to IKEA to get some white dishes, so I can get crazy. I'm definitely going to have a new set of bowls by Christmas. It's totally happening. 

Until then...It's on to the next project