I don’t know about you, but every birthday or Christmas season I find it is harder and harder to buy for my friends and family. Gifts are so easy to get now, you don’t ever have to leave your house but it’s really hard to find something uniquely awesome for the special people in your life. I may have a possible solution…
Get Creative.
Using your Calligraphy and lettering skills you’ve acquired from the many free calligraphy tutorials that are available, you can change a basic mug, glass, or bowl into a personal gift. If you have glassware that already has a design, you can add your personal touch to it to make it a one-of-a-kind gift.
There are two methods (so far) that I’ve found that works to make a dishwasher safe custom mugs.
If you want to follow written instructions continue scrolling, but if you want to watch a video with me explaining, that’s good too.
Links in description:
Learn Faux Modern Calligraphy
Learn Modern Calligraphy
Method 1: Sharpie Bake-On Mugs
If you are having trouble coming up with ideas for your design I’ll give you an example of what you can do: For Christmas one year, we decided to make mugs for all my immediate family. We wrote their name in modern calligraphy, flourished a bit and wrote their catch phrase at the bottom of the mug. You can’t get that anywhere else!
Things You’ll Need:
- Oil Based Sharpie Paint Pens
- Oven and a baking sheet
- Glassware of your choice
- Rubbing alcohol & paper towel
What You Need to Do:
Once you’ve gathered these things, write on your calligraphy and sketches. I won’t go into detail on how to do that here as I have a post for it here (Complete Beginners Guide to Calligraphy). If you make a mistake, make sure to get to it quickly and wipe the affected area with rubbing alcohol and a paper towel. Without the rubbing alcohol the paint just spreads around and you’ll have a bigger mess to deal with.
When you are happy with your creation follow these steps: leave the mug to dry for at least 1 day. Then place the mug in a cold oven on a flat baking sheet and set the oven to 450 degrees. Bake it for an hour
- Leave the mug to dry for at least 1 day
- Place the mug in a cold oven
- Set to 425° and bake for one hour
- Leave it to cool fully before use
Note: Below is a photo of one of the Sharpie mugs we made after 9 months of HEAVY use and hand washing. I think a dishwasher would be more kind to your design as there’s no scraping and scratching between mugs.
Method 2: Embossing On Mugs
This method is pretty cool and you have a lot of colour options, my favourites include gold and silver. Even though for this method you don’t need to put it in the oven, I would not suggest using plastic items as the heat gun can melt the subject you are working on.
Things You’ll Need:
- Embossing Marker
- Embossing Powder in the colour of your choice (Gold, Silver, Black)
- Paper large enough to catch excess embossing powder
- Craft heat gun
- Glassware of your choice
What You Need to Do:
Once you’ve gathered these items, thoroughly clean off the surface you are putting the embossed design on. Next, draw on your calligraphy/design with the embossing pen and place it on the paper you set aside earlier. Open your embossing Powder and pour enough powder onto your drawing to cover the entire surface and then some.
The powder will adhere to the drawing you made. Next you need to shake, tap and wipe off excess powder that isn’t in your design. Use the paper you gathered earlier to recovery unused embossing powder.
When you are happy with your removal of excess embossing powder, take out your heat gun and blow hot air onto the design until it melts and becomes one smooth entity. Leave to cool and you are all done!!!
Thanks for reading to the end!
I would like to know if you would like more craft/project ideas like this one in the future. If there’s a specific one you want me to cover please, please leave me a comment below!
The post How to Make Custom Calligraphy Mugs appeared first on Calligrascape.
