DIY Mother's Day Mugs

(I know, 3 posts in a weeks time, I'm a crazy woman!)

Soooo... are you all ready for Mother's Day? Or are you (like me) still running around getting things together? Well, here is ONE MORE gift that doesn't suck that you can definitely throw together at the last minute. Get to it. You've got 4.5 days.
(Side note: Sam's Grandmas, would you kindly avert your eyes until after the 12th? Thanksamillion)

I needed a gift for Sam to give to his Grandmas. This one includes baby finger prints... but really could be anything you want it to. Take this idea, personalize it, spin it however you want.
Both of the Grandmas are tea fanatics. Hot or cold-- but mostly hot. They always are toting around their mugs or hot tea sipping away. So I thought a personalized mug to sip their tea out of would be fantastic. I did a little searching on pinterest for some help. I found this handprint mug, and I said YES! and I found this wine glass which made me laugh, and I thought well, you can sip wine, you can sip tea-- whatever your vice is, I think it works.

I happened to have a couple white ceramic mugs laying around because we recently got some new dishes, and each place setting came with a mug. Even though we wanted place settings for 12 I didn't feel like I would ever need mugs for 12... so we kept about half of them, and put the other half in storage. But when I thought of this project, I went ooh free!!!
If you don't have plain ceramic mugs laying around... you can get these at the dollar store very inexpensively.
The only other thing you need is enamel paint. I used FolkArt Enamel in Burnt Umber and Foliage, purchased at craft supply store for about $2 each.

 

I started trying to free-hand my lettering with a tiny paintbrush... and I just don't have a steady enough hand. So I wiped that attempt off and went for plan B: a stencil. I got out my silhouette machine and quickly make a vinyl stencil for my letters. the stencil is a leeeeeetle finicky to  get it to lay correctly on a curved surface, but I fiddled with it a little and got it good enough.

Then I just dabbed my paint over the stencil-- waited about a minute for it to dray a smidge, then dabbed on a second coat. I peeled the stencil off while it was still wet... there were a few places where it had bled a bit, but that cleaned up fairly easily with a cotton swab, or if it has already dried too much, you can use an exacto knife to carefully scrape away the unwanted paint.

You can see my lettering is not perfect, but I felt like it looked good enough. Again, if you have a steady hand and good penmenship, you could free hand the lettering and it would likely be much much faster. I waited for the lettering to completely dry before adding the baby handprints on the side. It took my husband and I wrangling the toddler to make the handprint happen, and even still it was chaos, and somehow the dog ended up covered in paint-- so i don't have pics of that part. But... grab a small hand, paint on a thin coat of paint, press straight down and pull straight up, and wait for your hand print to dry. Try to block out the screams of childhood trauma from your *willing assistant. (*and by 'willing', I mean a toddler horrified that his hand is dirty and he is being held down, and hates craft time with mommy even more than he hates naptime.) Oh, I also freehanded the little heart on the 'tea bag'.

To cure the enamel paint (make it permanant) the bottle says you can let it air dry for 21 days (um, right, because you planned ahead and have 21 days to sit on this project) OR you can let it air dry for 1 hour, bake it for 30 minutes and let it cool. Um, I'll take door number 2 please. So here are my mugs sitting in the oven (please don't judge my dirty gross oven). As per the instructions, I placed them in a cold oven, turned it on to 350 degrees, once it had heated I set my timer for 30 mins, and when it went off, I turned the oven off to let them cool. I came back a couple hours later and everything was cooled and looked great!

 And there you have it! These will be stuffed with some tea, tied with a ribbon, and should be in the mail today on the way to Sam's Grandmas for Mother's day. I hope they love them, I think they turned out cute.
This was another pretty inexpensive gift-- you know me, gifting on the cheap! I only paid about $5 for the paint. If you didn't have mugs, you might be in the project more like $8-10, but still that's only $4 or $5 dollars for a nice personal mug, with leftover supplies (paint) for more projects.

So that's it! I hope you have been inspired to make something handmade for your mama or grandmother, or any special women in your life this mother's day! If you didn't see my other gift ideas (with tutorials!) check them out here and here.

Race Bib and Baseball Display (FATHER'S DAY!!!)

I know I am a day or so early here, but I wanted to share with you the father's day gifts I have been working so hard on the past couple weeks.
I think I have mentioned before that my husband is a runner, and my dad has recently (within the past two years) really gotten into it. In the spring and fall (not the hot summer-- yuck.) they like to do road races together... 5K, 10K, and their longest race was the half marathon last fall. In some races they got finisher medals, some races they placed and got medals, and in every race they run, they get a race bib (number). It's fun to keep them, but they start to pile up fast, and it's hard to know what to do with them.
So I made both my dad and my husband a race bib holder for father's day this year.

I like the way it turned out. He has a spot to put the most recent race bib on the top of those hooks, and the ones along the bottom can hold his medals. I looked around online and didn't find anything purchase-able that I liked, so I made my own. My dad really like the two-tone wood thing I did. Here's how it was done:

I started with a board-- 1x12x14 inches. I sanded reall well and used a wood prep... then I painted on a thin coat of a light stain. I used Minwax PolyShades (color: light oak). I

I let  the stain/poly finish dry for 6 hours, as recommended on the can). Then I flipped it and stained the back and sides of the board. After another 6 hour drying time, I sanded it very lightly with a high grit paper. I used my silhouette machine to make a vinyl decal that said RACES and placed that that the top.

Then I used a second darker stain (color: Honey) and painted right over the top of the vinyl and the entire piece.

 Then I let it dry for 6 hours and did the back and sides, and another 6 hour dry time... and then I peeled of the vinyl... leaving a two toned wood look.

Next I measured a race bib and measured and centered and marked everything on the board, then I drilled pilot holes for my hooks. I used small, right angle hooks that screwed into place.

I also put hardware on the back to hang it with.

And here is the completed project. Then we ganked Dad's race bibs and medals from his house and hung them on there when we gave it to him, he seemed pretty excited to receive this gift:

Oh, and that race bib on the top there? Is actually not from a race... rather it's a father's day card I made to look like a race bib:

I used publisher to create the text and banners, put the number in (the number... 61712 (June 17, 2012??? Father's Day?!?! My mom recognized it right away, we had to explain it to both my dad and Z... oh well) and then we put sam's footprint on the left there. It made a unique fun card.
Z got one too, although he was involved with the creating process (or at least watched me do the whole thing) so gifting it to him wasn't an exciting surprise and I didn't even think to take a picture. But anyway... They look really nice hanging on the wall, and my husband was especially happy and proud to have a place to hang all his medals.

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Z's dad is not much of a runner, but he is a huge baseball fan, so we decided to make him a little gift that combined his two favorite things: Baseball and his grandson.

These are pretty self explanatory-- so no fancy tutorial here. But we took a baseball, and used normal ink to put Sam's handprint on it. (I did not have a black ink pad, only grey, which is why it is a little light but it doesn't look too bad in person.) Then I just took a regular ol' sharpie and wrote a message on the back (there are two becuase we made one for daddy while we were at it.)

Z wanted to make a stand for it, so he got a board, cut it into squares, then he and my dad disappeared into Dad's shop for a few minutes and came back with decorative edges and a nice hole in the middle for the ball to sit on. (I can't tell you how this was accomplished other than... if you have the right guys and the right tools around... things happen.) Then I stained the little wood stands and tied them up with a pretty ribbon.

 

(I always have this problem trying to figure out ways to package or giftwrap things to give to guys that doesn't look too girly. Z always says it doesn't matter he doesn't care, and he doesn't need bows and frills... but it matters to me that it looks nice. anyone have any great ideas???)

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So there you have it... that's what Father's day looks like for us this year. Well, there are a few other little surprises in store still... but SHHHHHHHHH! It's not QUITE father's day yet!

The fathers in my life are truly remarkable men. My Dad, my father-in-law, and my husband are all strong, generous, loving men and fathers. I am blessed to have all of them in my life.

Happy Father's Day!