Pinterest Crafting: Sharpie Painted Mugs

Welcome to my first Pinterest Crafting blog series post!  This series is a monthly post documenting my adventures into all those DIY/Crafts pins all over Pinterest.  I will pick something from my Craft Ideas Pinterest board each month.  I will document the process of each craft or project with pictures and thoughts.  The most important aspect of this series is that I will be let you all know if it actually works!  

I know there is a woman (and I'm sorry, I can't remember her blog) that does something similar.  I will only be doing this once a month.  I will give some advice on what I did differently from the original pin and/or what I would do differently if I made a project again.

Okay, so let's get started...

This month, I went with something relatively easy.  I didn't want to do something too time consuming or that involved too many additional purchases.  I do plan on bigger DIY projects, but those will have to wait until the warmer months.  So, I went with something super popular:  Sharpie painted mugs!

I have a little background story about Sharpie mugs...During the summer of 2012 (when I was unemployed for 6 weeks after graduation), I started to get a little more crafty.  I had a lot of time on my hands.  One of the many projects I did that summer was the infamous Sharpie mug.  We had this nice soft yellow colored mug hanging out in our cabinet.  I decided that one day it needed to be decorated and it needed to be decorated with a quote about love.  Michael and I have this huge pack of Sharpies-all different colors, every color you can imagine.  I picked a small quote (it had to fit on the mug) about love.  All the words were written in black, but the word "loved" was written in red.  I popped that bad boy into the oven and voila!  I had a new mug.  Michael even liked it.  

I used it a few times, but the more I washed it, the more the quote started to rub off, especially the red Sharpie-d word.  I was not happy!  Not because I spent a lot of time on it, but because I thought this would be a great gift idea for that Christmas season.  Now, I was out of handmade ideas!

Anyways, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post from Glued To My Crafts.  She took on this very project, with Sharpies, but with OIL-BASED SHARPIE PAINT PENS!

These changed my life.  And, there are tons of colors.  The only downside is that they probably aren't a common tool in your craft stash.  I had to go out and buy these paint pens.  And they weren't too affordable in a way in which I could get 10 colors at once.  I had to settle for three:  black, gold, and pink.  And these were $3.99 each at Michael's.  

Here is everything you need for this project:  ceramic coffee mugs, oil-based Sharpie paint pens, stencils/masks/stickers (optional and not pictured), and an oven.  The mugs I got from Target, only because I was already there getting something else. I had every intention to find some at the Dollar Store.  These were $3.99 each.  I thought I'd go with a simple design, something that didn't take too much thought.  As seen in one of the above photos, I went with polka dots.

Before you get started, you'll want to prime these paint pens.  I pressed the pen tip into the barrel with my finger for what felt like a million times!  Then you'll start to see the paint color saturate the pen tip.  The tip is white, so you'll see the paint color start to fill it (unless you have white, which I am sure may be a little difficult to see).

This was the first image I painted.  I really wanted to do polka dots in all three colors on the mug, but I felt like this pink was a little too "hot," but I still wanted to use it.  I had a die cut heart already on my craft table, so I put that in the bottom of my mug and traced around it with the paint pen.  Then I colored it in.  **This pink is more of a bright, hot pink, maybe even close to neon.  And it is opaque.  You can definitely tell that it is paint.**

Then I took the black Sharpie paint pen and started to make small-ish circles (these turned out to be ovals) all around the mug.  Next time, I'd take a little more time to make this slightly bigger circles.  **The black paints very smoothly and it is also opaque.  To me, it kind of went on like you were actually drawing with a regular Sharpie marker.**

To see how each color looked by itself, I made small circles with the gold on the other mug. **I have to say, I was quite disappointed by this gold Sharpie paint pen.  It paints more sheer than the other colors.  I don't know if it is because it's a "metallic" gold or what, but I didn't like it.  And, it seems to dry differently as well.  The outer circle of each dot looks different than the filled in color, which I don't like.**

Here's what the mugs look like with gold and black polka dots all over.  I still felt as if the mugs looked empty, so I decided to cover them with more small dots!

Here is what that decision looked like.  I like it better with the various sized dots. I wish the gold Sharpie paint pen were more opaque than it is, but oh well.

Off to the oven.  Set your oven for 350 degrees F and put your mugs inside.  I put mine on a small baking sheet.  Set the timer for 30 minutes.  After the 30 minutes is done, turn off the oven BUT LEAVE THE MUGS INSIDE.  I left my mugs inside the oven for a few hours.

I will definitely do something like this again.  Next time though, I'd plan it out a little better.  And, these oil-based paint pens can be used on glass and wood too, so I'll have to come up with a project to see how well these work on those materials.

I will also keep you updated on the status of the "wear" of the paint.  Hope you enjoyed this post about whether oil-based Sharpies really work on ceramic mugs!  If you have any suggestions for upcoming Pinterest crafts, please let me know in the comments section!

xoxo,
Heather