I’m on a roll! Another post in less than a month!

This one is about a small project I made for a friend’s birthday gift and some of you should have already got the nerdy reference. I also tried to use my camera to take some snaps of the final product, but they are out of focus. There’s plenty of room for improvement there!

I was inspired by this mug here.

This was a new crafting technique, so I read a bit about the best paint to be used. There are hundreds of results on Pinterest about sharpie mugs, but also many feedback saying that the drawings were not permanent. The trick seems to be that it’s a special kind of sharpie, which I couldn’t find in Ireland. So, I searched for alternatives on Internet and found that there are porcelain markers, so set off to a shopping trip to a couple of art and craft shops in Dublin. I was looking for the edding 4200 porcelain brushpen or something similar, but when I was in Art&Hobby in Jervis Shopping Centre, I noticed that Posca markers could be made permanent by baking the object in the oven. However, they didn’t have the colors that I needed. Finally, I found what I needed in Evans Art Supplies, and for the desperation of my bank account, I also discovered how much awesome stuff they have and how not very far they are from my usual shopping route.

They had the edding markers, but they only sell in sets, so I would have needed to get two of them, although the price by pen would have been cheaper, it was cheaper to just get the Posca markers in the colors I needed: light blue, orange, black and white. Mostly, I didn’t want to have even more pens I didn’t use around.

Initially, I wanted to have the blue portal in the inner bottom of the cup, but I wasn’t sure how safe would be to then drink coffee in it, so I settled to put it in the outer one. I don’t have many friends, so I prefer not to poison them.

Here’s a mini-tutorial of the steps:

1) Create a stencil and use the cup to decide where you want your stick figure to enter and leave the portal. I made one of paper and covered in sellotape. Not too fancy, but it worked.

2) Use the stencil to mark the outlines on the cup on both your “portals”. I used a fineliner so it was easy to rub clean. If you are confident enough, you can skip the stencil and go free hand. I wasn’t 🙂

3) Then draw your portals with the markers: orange for the entrance and blue for the exit. I am very detailed obsessed, even though sometimes the outcome doesn’t show this, so I made sure that the body and the portal made sense. So, I only used the black markers once I was sure everything was looking realistic (or as realistic as a videogame could be). Posca markers are meant to be removable on certain materials until baked, so changes can be still made once you committed your lines to the mug with them. See here for details.

4) The last touch was to write the famous punch line “The cake is a lie”.

5) Finally, I let them dry for one day and baked them… twice.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I wanted to find more information to make sure the mug would be actually washable and found this video. She tested the markers on glasses and mugs, and the results were quite comforting.

Unfortunately, the first attempt at baking (120 degrees for 30-40 minutes) didn’t grant the mug the powers of washability: the drawing didn’t wash off completely but the paint was ruined in some small spots. I think I was to eager to try, and it didn’t cooled down enough. The second attempt went a bit better: 150 degrees for 30-40 minutes and then I let the mug cool down in the oven until the following dayWhen I put it under the water with some light rubbing, the paint held. However, I’m not completely sure the powers are strong enough, so I taught the mug to defend itself.

I have another cup and plenty of color left in the markers, so I might give it another try with a different subject and test more baking solutions.

And of course, as it was a present, it needed a themed wrapping, so I upcycled a little brown paper bag into a Aperture Laboratories cake bag to complete the project.