Note: the paint used in this tutorial is non-toxic but not food safe. It is not recommended to paint where your mouth will go on the mug. Of course I learned that after painting mine, so I’m helping you to learn from my mistakes!

I was itching to get creative and after remembering we had about four left over mugs from our wedding favors (three years ago!) where the print was defected, I was on the hunt to figure out how to re-purpose these mugs without wasting them.

{Our winter wedding favors – mugs with hot chocolate packets}

I knew I wanted to use Martha Stewart paint in the light blue/green family with gold and picked up a pink color as well. And just FYI – Beach Glass is currently my favorite color of all time. If you’ve never worked with acrylic craft paint before, pay attention to the finish on the bottle. I picked the Satin finish and Metallic for the gold. The Satin finish has a great matte finish.

I had a vague idea of how I wanted to paint the mugs and knew I would need a stencil and some painters tape. I would need 100% pure acetone to soak the mug in to dissolve the design that was already on the mug. Not pictured is sandpaper to help me get off the remaining design. And of course you can’t forget your paint brush(es)!

I grabbed a plastic container that I had on hand, placed the mug in it face down, filled it up with the acetone enough to cover the design, and let it soak for maybe about twenty minutes. After rinsing it off, I took my sandpaper and scrubbed off what was remaining. As you can see, the mug is now clean! I was pretty excited to see this method worked!

Working on my first mug, I taped off the design I wanted, thought carefully of how and where I wanted the colors. I decided to do a pink and gold stripe mug with a gold handle. You should know now that the handle is not easy to paint. At least not for me!

Each mug took about three coats of paint. If you’re patient, wait an hour between coats. If you don’t, you’ll get clumps.

In the middle of planning my wedding, plans were changed. I had already bought vases that I would be using for centerpieces that I bought from Ikea that ended up not being used. So, I grabbed one of those left over vases as well and wrapped some tape around it and started painting. I used Gold, Surf, Beach Glass, Pea Shoot, and at the very top I used Gold again.

{in process}

The paint ends up being pretty thick when you pull of the tape, so there are definitely some uneven edges on the mug as some of the paint was peeled off along with the tape. Oops? Since I can’t use these as drinking mugs (bummer), I’ve decided to use the other mug that I painted in Beach Glass and monogrammed in Gold as my makeup brush holder.

The way I’ve cured these is by letting them air dry according to the directions on the packaging of the paint. I believe this is for 21 days. These mugs are hand wash only.

I have two mugs left to paint. Any ideas?