Christmas, 2014!

Wow, I cannot believe I haven't posted since September, 2014. Had to think why that was the case, and realized I had a great excuse. I became a grandma at the first of November, and traveled out of town to be with my daughter, son-in-law and grandbaby for five weeks. It was the best! When I got back it was only a couple of weeks until Christmas, and I had done absolutely no planning for the holidays. And, here it is, January, 2015.
During the interim, I made a few items. I found a Pinterest posting on these mugs that looked easy and fun to make, so I made 16 of them as gifts for Christmas.

These would be a great craft to do with kids. They could do this particular project, or really draw anything they wanted! I ordered an entire case of the mugs (24), and have already used all of them. The Pinterest posting is linked to a blogger who gave all the info for making. In a nutshell, you use oiled based Sharpee markers. They must be oil based. The regular water-based ones will not work. I cut the letters from vinyl, and stuck them to the mug. Then, just picked out two colors for each one (you can do however many you please), and started making dots all around the letter. Once I was happy with it, I just took the vinyl letter off. You could easily use contact paper or anything else that would mask the area.
Next, you need to make it permanent, so you bake in the over at 350 for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn the oven off, but do not remove the mugs. Leave them in the oven until it cools down completely on its own. Please note that this will produce a strong smell in your kitchen, so you should have good ventilation (windows open). I have double ovens, so I put half of them in the top and the rest in the bottom, and did them all at the same time.

The heating of the mugs will make the Sharpee permanent. I haven't tried putting it into the dishwasher, but I've heard it is fine to do so.
I made another mug for my nephew with a monogram. This one was etched.

Here is a box I made for the mug. The pattern came from SVG Cuts' Winter Gazebo SVG Kit. I made the top solid, and I added panels to the sides on both the inside and outside, to make it stronger for  the heavy mug.

One other item I made was a box card from SVG Cuts' Christmas Box Cards SVG Kit. On the back, I glued a gift card envelope, and used this as my Bunco gift for December.

That's all I have to share for now. New items in the process right now, so hopefully regular blogging will ensue.

Happy New Year - 2015!