[Hmm… new facebook notification from Shelly…] Oh.My.Gracious. I’m so glad she posted this to my wall. {If you love coffee and The Princess Bride as much as I, you swooned a little bit too, yes?} Clearly, a girlfriends’ craft gathering needed immediately to be organized. Susan brought the cranberry sierra mist and mad crafting skills… …A couple of us grabbed some mugs ($1 each at Dollar Tree, but they have a gold rim; $3 at Wamart, where we got ours; and available in a few different styles for $4 at Target)… …and I brought the sharpies (and acetone and cotton balls to erase, just in case!). I printed out a few copies of our inspiration, and we set to work! The toughest part (for me, anyway) was keeping a straight line while writing on a curved surface. Tensions ran high. Okay, not really, we laughed our fannies off… Maybe it was the sheer joy of creating with girlfriends… …Or maybe it’s that duckface Shelly makes when she’s really focused. We learned that marking the three horizontal colored line before starting the script helped keep things straight. Then after the lettering was complete, it was easier to add the vertical borders. I liked my “nametag” borders a little wider and curved at the corners (blue and green). [Marisa’s little cutie in the background there could not fully appreciate the twist on this quote, I fear. Alas.] But I definitely think the handwritten style of the black wording on the red mug is the way to go. [Our friend Denise was off on a trip to NYC, poor thing, but she joined us in spirit.] We baked the mugs at a low temperature for a couple of hours to cure them, then I washed mine in the dishwasher (if this thing ever wants to be used by me, it cannot be handwash), but when I pulled it out of the dishwasher, all the ink had been washed off. GAH! So I redrew it again (with a red border), but when I heated it this time, I put it in a cold oven, heated it to 450*, and let the mug cure for a good hour. The thought is, i believe, that the glaze on the mug will melt a bit and meld to the ink.] The problem is, the red ink faded to muted gold. Sooo, I traced the “Hello my name is” and border again, this time in blue… But it cured to an olive green. So I’m thinking of grabbing a red ceramic marker and giving the mug one more go! [For now, I shall relish it in all its pithy, albeit olive, glory!] [[***UPDATE: A couple of friends have told me that Sharpie oil-based paint pens are the way to go. And my friend Mandi suggested that you should also wipe down the mug with rubbing alcohol before starting. AND she said when she did a mug, she got hers at World Market for $2!! […But I only found $3 white mugs at World Market yesterday when I checked.] Either way, I guess I should have consulted my brilliant friends before doing this craft! *palm-face* 🙂 

So I used acetone to rub off the [stubborn] olive sharpie (the black wasn’t budging, but that was fine with me), and redid this mug UH-GAIN, this time with blue and black oil based sharpie paint pens I already owned.  …But when I heated, it turned color too, just like the regular sharpie, WAH!!! So I retraced it ONE LAST TIME in the blue oil based sharpie, but did not heat to cure. One last test was the dishwasher, regular cycle, heat dry… Worked like a charm! This mug has already been washed thrice in the dishwasher and is looking perfect, huzzah!]]

How cute would these be at a gift exchange, for a teacher, or in a stocking? Fun, right?! …Um, if a person knows and loves this movie, that is… Otherwise, it might just be… weird. 🙂