DIY Sharpie Mug

Monday already?!  

Mondays call for an even larger than normal dose of coffee, and this Monday morning I'm drinking my second favorite drink (wine wins!) out of a fab new coffee mug.

I've been seeing cool Sharpie mugs all over the place, and have been keeping my eye out for a cheap, white mug so that I could create one of my own.  

Not like white white mugs are hard to find, but I was being really cheap about it.  Even the $3 mugs at Walmart weren't making the cut.  

But last week, I stumbled across a few Starbucks Scales Mugs for the bargain price of $1.25, so I snatched those babies right up.  They are gorgeous as-is, so I certainly won't draw on all of them.  But the triangles seemed like they would make it easy for an artistic failure like myself to create a cool design.

Also, wouldn't they make a great vessel for a small gift for almost anyone?!  I can imagine a ton of cute gifts that could be given in this beautiful mug.....so I bought a few extra for that purpose.

You can find the Starbucks Scales Mug here....but not for $1.25. Sorry.

(Affiliate link)

To create my mug, I just traced and colored in triangles using two different Sharpies--one black and the other gold.  Tracing the triangles wasn't quite as easy as I expected it to be, so the shapes took on a slightly hand-drawn, imperfect look.  Which I kind of dig. 

To make the design permanent and dishwasher safe  (Update-- My mug lasted only a few cycles in the dishwasher before the Sharpie began to wear away.  So if you want to preserve your artwork, hand washing is the way to go.  Me, I  keep putting it in the dishwasher and chalk the wear and tear up to be proof of how much I love my mug!), I baked the mug in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  When baking Sharpie designs on glass or ceramic, it is important to put the object in the oven while it is completely cool, and to allow the oven to cool off completely before removing it from the oven.  This prevents your mug or other object from cracking due to sudden temperature change.  

I found that my gold triangles became much more matte after being baked.  To be honest, I liked the mug better when the gold triangles were shiny...but it still looks good with the matte gold triangles, and there's not much that could be done to prevent that.   

So simple. So cute!

Have a great week!

Linking Up At

Tutorials and Tips

The DIY'ers

Work It Wednesday

Sweet Haute

Link Party Palooza

Share Your Creativity