With the holidays just around the corner (EEEKKK less than a week until Christmas!!), I’ve spent many hours on pinterest looking up potential gift ideas. In my perfect martha stewart world, I would be giving everyone beautiful gift baskets filled with delicious cookies and hand-made crafts. Unfortunately, of my list of crafts, I only got around to making one of my pins. The Sharpie mug.

My co-worker and I were tossing around ideas about what to get our supervisor when we settled on a coffee themed basket. And of course, a custom mug would add the perfect touch! I had envisioned Ontario with a plane flying over top taking some hi-res orthophotography of the province. And since he loves ‘metadata’ so much, we knew we had to incorporate that into the mug somehow. This is what we came up with.
After getting really excited about our craft project, we decided to look up craft fails to see how others faired with similar projects. DISASTER. I quickly learned that regular sharpies NO NOT WORK! The consensus seems to be that oil-based paints were the way to go so off I went to Michaels to pick up supplies. I picked up these oil-based Sharpie paint markers for $4/each and this white ceramic mug from Walmart for $3.
After doing a few practice drawings, we came to the sad realization that our artistic abilities resembled that of a first graders. How is it that things always look WAY BETTER in your head than they do on paper? We decided to try a less ambitious design. Even then… I’m horrified by our inabilities to draw a nice circle.
Here’s what they looked like before putting them in the oven to bake.
We also included one of his famous quotes on the side.
While I was at it, I also made a mug for my grams. For this mug, I attempted to draw each of the cousins. I’d say it was moderately successful.
The next step was to throw it in the oven to set the paint. Put the mug in and then turn the oven to 350 degrees and once it reaches this temperature, leave it in for another 30 mins. Once your 30 mins is up, leave it in the oven to cool down.

So I can’t say for sure how long the design will last but I gave it a quick rinse under water and the paint seemed to stay on ok.

To complete the gift, we picked up a little basket, a bag of coffee from Natas Cafe, and a box of amazing truffles from the Naked Chocolate. Check out my other post for photos from my visit to the Naked Chocolate.