acrylic paint on mugs
Autumn absolutely is the absolute season. With balmy temperatures and basal bugs, you can absorb your chargeless time exploring the outdoors. Evenings can be spent awash about a campfire, or snuggled up on the couch with a movie.
No amount what you decide, there is annihilation like a balmy cup of cider or amber on a chilly, abatement evening. It is the accepted icing on the cake. And what a bigger way to adore your cooler than by sipping it out of an adorable, blithe mug?
I am a bit of a mug collector. They're both advantageous and decorative, and I accept them in aloof about every blush and admeasurement that you can anticipate of. Some were purchased new, some are from austerity stores, and some were gifts. Some affection animation characters and drawings, and others, adorning sayings. But some of my favorites are the ones that were handmade or hand-decorated.
Decorating your own mugs is a abundant way to personalize them. Plus, it lends the befalling to accord a facelift to old mugs or austerity boutique finds, and makes for a fun activity you can do alone, with accompany or with the kids. All you charge is a scattering of materials, a brace of hours and a little creativity.
One affair I absolutely like about this activity is that you can accomplish it as simple or circuitous as you'd like. You can acrylic anything, from a little author or an antecedent to a quotation, adage or a picture. You absolutely do not accept to be adroit or artistically inclined! Kids can go crazy on mugs of their own or for ability for ancestors members, and the apple-pie up is accessible with soap and water.
You'll need:
• Mugs, with a bland apparent (solid, apparent colors tend to assignment best)
• Acrylic acrylic that is accordant with bottle and ceramics (I chose white, atramentous and gold Americana Gloss Enamels multi-surface acrylic paint. They're a brace of bucks anniversary at breadth ability stores, and they action baking instructions on the characterization to set the paint.)
• Acrylic brushes (I like account brushes because of their size)
• Abrading alcohol
• Cardboard towels
• Affection swabs
Before you alpha painting, activate what you would like your mug to say or affection and plan it on blemish paper. This will advice you actuate how big to draw or address and area on the mug you should position your piece.
If you're alive with kids, ask if they appetite to address words, draw pictures or both — annihilation goes!
When you accept an abstraction of what you appetite to do, basic the mug by wiping it bottomward with abrading alcohol. This will get rid of fingerprints, oils, dust and such, and advice the acrylic attach to the surface. Then, alpha painting!
When you're alive with the paint, accumulate in apperception that beneath is more. Add a little acrylic to your besom and activate to account out your account or chat with the paint, again go over it with addition layer. A brace of ablaze layers of acrylic tends to assignment bigger than one blubbery layer.
If you accomplish a aberration — abhorrence not! Simply clean it with a cardboard anhydrate or affection besom biconcave in abrading alcohol. (Just be abiding to absolutely clean it away, or it will be set after back you broil the mug!)
Be abiding to accumulate the acrylic abroad from any aliment or alcohol surface, including the rim of the mug area you'll alcohol from!
Once your architecture is set, put your mug in a safe abode for it to dry for four days, according to the Americana Gloss Enamels' label. Then, cast the mugs upside bottomward (for added stability), and abode them on a cookie sheet, and chase the baking instructions on the acrylic label.
Dozens of DIY blogs acclaim application oil-based acrylic markers (not approved abiding Sharpies or agnate markers!) for this project. Abounding of the blogs acquaint to abode the mugs central of the oven, set it to 350 degrees, broil for 30 minutes, and acquiesce the mugs to air-conditioned central of the oven. My niece fabricated a mug with Sharpie oil-based markers, as abounding of the blogs alleged for — but the acrylic is alpha to dent off, and her designs aren't captivation up. While abounding bloggers assume to accept luck with this method, we aren't. Perhaps I will try to broil them best to see if the acrylic will cure.
Once your mugs accept cooled, they're accessible to be used! They are safe to ablution by hand, but do not put them in the dishwasher or the microwave.
Pour in some hot angel cider, and enjoy!
Laura Anderson Shaw is the editor of Radish. Did you try this project? Post a photo on Instagram with the hashtag #RadishCrafts, or email a photo to editor@radishmagazine.com for a adventitious to be featured in an accessible issue.
