Decorating A Coffee Mug | With Ninjas!

: )!!! hahaha. This really does crack me up.

I’m not sure why, but when I was brainstorming about how I wanted to decorate my coffee mug, all I could see were a bunch of ninjas. Well technically, my final product has only one ninja. But! he is an awesome ninja who isn’t worrying about taking down 10 attacking bad guys.

Want the steps to decorate your own mug?

Note: Regular Sharpie will not work, it will just come right off. You will need an oil based paint pen/Sharpie. I found mine at Home Depot in the paint section for $4

2) Since I can’t freehand anything to save my life, I printed some figures then used my exacto knife to cut them out, then taped them on my mug so they would create the story I was looking for.

3) Next I came through with the oil based black Sharpie and colored them in. Let them dry before removing the stencils or they will smudge!

Tip: If you make your own stencil this way, be sure to take your time coloring them in because the fine details are very easy to mess up. For example: the fine line that creates the separation between the little guys legs is just a tiny shred of paper so if you are moving too quickly you could smudge this detail and then your end product would have a block for a base instead of legs.

Now even taking my time, my lines were not as clean as I would have like….see photo below.

See that guy on the left? Yeah…a couple of them came out that way, but don’t worry there is always a solution.

4) To clean up the lines I grabbed an alcohol wipe and my cuticle cutter. I took the side of the cuticle cutter that’s used for pushing back the cuticle and wrapped it in the alcohol wipe. Then went around to all the lines and used the make shift tool to gently rub away any sharpie out of line.

5) Let your mug set for 24 hours.

6) Put your mug in the oven and turn it to 400 degrees and bake the mug for 40 minutes. It is important to place your mug in the oven as it is heating up.

7) Once the 40 minutes is up, turn the oven off and let the mug cool off in the oven before you bring it out.

Then it’s ready for use!

Total Time: 4 hrs + 24 hr cure time
Total Cost: $4