Silhouette Adventures-Cocoa Mug Revamp

Do you like my Sweet Hot Cocoa Mug?
Here's the story on my Mug Revamp:

I'm taking a brief hiatus from organizing, to do something a little crafty...I need every now and then to stop and just take a minute to create. It's my outlet...my stress reliever

although massages are good too

First I have to say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Target (are you with me?)

My daughter has dance class on Wednesday's to which parents are not allowed to stay and watch except for the first class of the month (I never knew dance classes were SO strict), which is not good for me since it's in the next town over and thus too far for me to go home and come back. There is however a Target down the street which is the closest target to me, so yea I don't get to go as often as I would like, which is both good and bad. I naturally put two and two together and decided that Wednesday would from here on out be my Target Day!!! I have had to cut it down to every other Wednesday though because I kept buying things instead of just looking, but in my defense, it's hard not to.
Can I just say that I love looking through the dollar bins...sometimes I don't find much, just little toys for the kids, but every now and then I find the coolest things. Like this cocoa travel mug for example.

Not only does it have this awesome pink band around the center to keep your fingers from getting burned, or the mug from slipping right through your hands, but it's otherwise a completely blank canvas for me to create upon! And so I shall!

I thought this would be the perfect project to kick off my Silhouette Adventures.

The Silhouette Machine is a fairly new tool for me, I just got it this Christmas as a gift. I was a Cricket girl, but lost my Cricket when we were robbed this summer, which is a story for another time. The important thing to note is that I am new to the Silhouette, have not had much practice with it and all that it can do, (which is a lot,) and my "adventures" are just that, adventures into figuring out what the Silhouette can do, and how I get it to do them.

I decided the best route here was to use my Silhouette to cut out some super cute vinyl shapes to prettify my mug! The mug is not dishwasher safe, and can only be hand washed so careful washing is the key here.

One of the reasons that I decided to go with the Silhouette rather than get anther Cricket was the ability of the Silhouette to be free of cartridges. The Silhouette has a vast library of images that you can browse and buy (for a dollar or less usually), but you can also use images that you already have on your computer or that you create yourself. With Cricket cartridges at $80 a pop this was a very appealing factor to me. I hit the Silhouette Store and found some pretty sweet images for my mug, and I got to work cutting them out with black vinyl.

I cut out my vinyl, made sure my mug was dust free and ready to go, and got to it. Here's what my newly prettified mug looks like now

I wanted to carry the design all the way to the top of the mug but with all the edges it started becoming a bit difficult, still it's an improvement I would say. I used a tougher vinyl than the normal just because I knew my mug would get wet, so we'll see how it holds up. For the time being though it looks a lot prettier, it makes me happy and all I need now is some delicious gourmet hot cocoa to warm me up while I work. Where is my favorite place to shop for delicious gourmet hot cocoa you ask? Well of course it's the Ticket Kitchen! If you haven't checked out this shop then you should...it's fantastic and I'm not just saying that because she's my boss...it really is fantastic!


Just a thought you could get any travel mug and do this same thing to it and it would make a pretty cool gift for the coffee lover, or hot cocoa addict in your life. Just a thought!

Happy Crafting!