Two Down...

Braeden's sibling gifts were finished this evening. I was very excited about these, and still am, BUT they were harder for him than I anticipated and I ended up doing most of it myself.

I saw the idea HERE when I was looking for ideas for Braeden. I LOVE this blog and she always has GREAT ideas. In fact, her blog is what gave me the idea to have the kids make each other's gifts in the first place.

Anyway, I showed Braeden this idea of hot chocolate mugs and he loved it! We had just had our first cup of hot cocoa of the season, using mom's old mugs. I have a whopping total of four, and they're nothing special, they don't even match. So when I saw this I thought it was so perfect, and Braeden loved it too!

We gathered our supplies...

We found some great mugs at our local dollar store, so purchased those instead of scouring thrift stores. We found the pen and graphite paper at Mich*aels so the total for this project of five mugs came in at around $11.

Braeden helped to cut and tape the initials and graphite paper onto the mugs...

Then I traced the initial with the graphite paper onto the mug...

And outlined it with the porceleine paint pen...

By this time, after I saw how hard it was for me to do lines on a rounded mug using a paint pen you have to shake and test every so often, I didn't think Braeden would be able to do the lines like in the example. So I suggested polka dots or something similar. He started with dots, but they weren't turning out well to his critical eye and he decided to fill it in instead.

That didn't work either as it's a fine point pen and it just was too much space to fill that way. So... we wiped it off (very forgiving which is great!) and started again. But when I got to the outline and it was his turn, he decided he liked them as is... so we left them...

After letting them dry for 24 hours, you then bake them for 35 min and the pen is permanently affixed to the mugs! We are planning on filling some bags of hot cocoa to add inside before wrapping them up! He loves them and I guess that's what counts, but I'll start early to scout something out for him for next year! :)