DIY Sharpie Mug

YOU GUYS. Look at this mug my mom got me for Christmas. "Make It Happen." Yep, you read that right. Can you believe this find? It's like its just waiting for the Girls Team to get our crafty little hands all over it. So that's exactly what we did this week.

If you've spent five minutes on Pinterest, you know that there is no shortage of projects related to Sharpies. Draw on this mug, design this plate, bake it in the oven, you're done! So, we decided it was finally time to try this technique out.

My mom found this mug, as is, at Anthropologie.

Too perfect. I knew I liked that place.

 

The next step was to get the how-to details from Pinterest. We didn't use one set of directions; we sort of mixed and matched from different blogs. In this fourth year of MIHM, we have some confidence to do that kind of thing now. The two main takeaways were related to the type of Sharpie to use, and the baking/setting process...

 

It was recommended that we use "oil based Sharpies" as opposed to just regular Sharpies. So we bought a pack of them; they weren't hard to find.

 

After washing the mug, we used our best writing to write with the Sharpie. "Monday" on side one...

... and "#MIHM" on side two. Just for fun. We love a good hashtag at MIHM.

Baking/setting the marker is the most critical step in this project. Similar to the Glitter Champagne Flutes from 2012, you want to let the oven heat up to 350 degrees with the mugs inside. This prevents cracking.

Once the oven reached 350 degrees, the mugs baked in the toasty little oven for 30 minutes. Some blogs said 15 minutes, some said 30, just FYI.

And, another critical step, letting the oven cool down back to room temperature with the mugs still inside. This again prevents cracking.

Tada! Our cute, DIY Make It Happen Monday mugs are complete! Some blogs recommended using a sealant (the same sealant we used for our DIY Coasters) but we thought, the less chemicals the better, and opted to not seal the Sharpie portion of our mugs.

Per many blog sources, we waited 72 hours to use the mug, but when we did, our drinks tasted a little cuter than usual. :)

 

This DIY Sharpie Mug craft was SO easy. All of the work was just related to doing the proper "how-to" research, and the time consuming part was the baking process. It seems like anyone could really do any type of Sharpie project, just like Pinterest suggests. After one hand washing, our mugs still look great. We think the true test of the quality of this project will be how the marker holds up over time. But for now, we love our cute little blog mugs. And no, we won't be mass producing them for the Make It Happen Monday gift shop. Sorry! #MIHM