Artline Monday - Mother's Day gift

Are you all set for Mother's Day this Sunday or are you still looking for a gift?  I wanted to give my mum something a little different this year so I thought I would personalise one of her presents with some of my Artline pens.

Supplies

I brought her a mug with mum printed on it in gold and a plain white mug for my girls to decorate for me too, then I went through my pen collection to find the best ones to work on ceramic.

When I researched this craft online I read that water based permanent markers don't tend to stand up to being washed repeatedly unless you bake the ceramics in the oven after you have drawn on them, I wasn't too keen on this idea so I decided to test a few different pens myself to see what works best.

My pen test

I left the inks until they were 100% dry and then gave them a scrub in the sink, dried them off and then washed them again a few more times until I was happy that I had found the right pens to use.  The Artline 444XF paint marker and Artline 900XF metallic pens all looked perfect after my repeated testing so I decided to use those to personalise my mug.

Heart shaped post-it-note

The first thing I did was choose the shape I wanted to use on the mug, I picked a heart post-it-note and then stuck that over the word Mum.  I put a bit of folded over washi tape underneath the bottom of the heart to hold the note securely in place and then it was time to start decorating! 

Adding lots and lots of spots

I used my gold pen to dot over the mug and partly over the heart post-it, then I used the silver one and left the spots to dry for 10 minutes .  The last step was to add more dots with my white paint marker and then it was time to let the paint dry!

Waiting for the pens to dry

Once everything was completely dry I slowly peeled the post-it off the mug and this is how it turned out.  I really like it!

After removing the post-it-note

My finished mug

I showed my girls this technique but they decided to do things their own way! 

Drawing around the star

My eldest daughter decided to draw around the star shaped post-it-note and then did a spot of freehand decoration before passing the mug onto her little sister.

Adding some decoration

After a few "creative differences" this is their lovely design!

Made with love

Our Mother's Day mugs

It was nice to do something fun and creative together and the mugs are certainly unique! I will treasure mine and I'm sure my mum will be happy with hers.

I haven't tested the cups in a microwave or dishwasher so if you make your own I think you should consider them to be hand wash only and treat them like fine china instead of a regular mug, just to be on the safe side.

 I would love to know if you do give this a try!