Make or Buy a Personalized Coffee Travel Mug

To make a coffee mug unique you can ad pictures, names, logos, handles and lids. You can buy pre-made photo mugs or have your image printed on a mug.

On this site you can even learn to create a custom personalized ceramic coffee travel mug made from homemade or store bought pottery clay.

This can mean something as simple as carving your name into a clay mug, or as intricate as screen printing a photo with glaze onto the surface of a mug.

Since this is a site about pottery on the wheel, let's talk more about making a personalized ceramic travel coffee mug.

3 Styles of Personalized Mugs

1) Carved Letters - You can simply take your wheel thrown mug, while it is in the leather hard stage and carve into it. You can use clay carving tools to carve a name or logo into the surface of the clay.

You can even use a unique glaze or stain in the letters to bring out the details of the writing in the final mug.

2) Raised Letters - This technique is a little more challenging, but can look very sharp if done correctly. Rather than carving into the mug wall, create raised letters from additional clay and attach them to the outside of the pot.

You can create the letters by rolling out a sheet of clay and stamping letters into the clay using clay or scrap booking stamps, then cutting them out. You can also carve the letters out of the clay using a clay knife or needle.

Once you have your letters cut out attach them to the outside of the pot using a little slip. Score the pot and the letters to ensure a good bond. Clean up the edges of the letters using a sponge or a damp brush.

When painting clay pots with glaze, potters will often paint wax resist over the letters in order to leave them unglazed. This creates a contrasting texture between the raw clay lettering and the shiny, smoothly glazed mug.

It also maintains the detail and legibility of the letters where glaze will often obscure it.

3) Sgraffito - Finally, you can try this unique technique. Dip or paint the walls of the mug with stains or colored pottery glazes. Then etch or scratch a name into the surface of the walls revealing the color of the clay underneath.

Look for any of these techniques to make or when buying a custom pottery travel name mug. Have fun personalizing and Happy Potting.

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