Does Drawing On Mugs With Sharpies Work?

So this whole Sharpie mug decorating craft has been everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. And I figured it was time that I gave it a try finally. I wanted it to work so badly because it’s so cute but I only managed to get *kind of* results. Quite pretty and worth a try anyway so let’s get going!

I used a mug from Daiso and a mixture of Artline permanent markers and Sharpies.

There were so many different methods that I thought I would test them all and see what came out well. I drew each colour on to the bottom of the mug.

Plain drawing on the mug managed to stay through hand washing but not when I added detergent. Boo.

Then I thought that maybe using hand sanitiser would get cool effects like it does with Sharpies on silk painting. Yep it did! Cool watercolour effect!

I drew on a bunch of colour splotches.

Then used some sanitizer on my finger to spread it around.

Super cool look, very watercolourish! But even after being dry, it just came off on my hands because the sanitiser had degraded it. I then tried heat sealing it using a hairdryer on high until it was burning hot. Nope, it still all washed off with water.

So in a last ditch attempt I decided to try the oven version. I drew on my design again:

And tried slow baking it but still no dice. So what I’ve concluded from this is that it really does depend a lot on the glaze of the mug you’re using. There are so many kinds of glazes and so many kinds of mugs that this was never going to be able to work on all of them. Of course I could just continue buying mugs and trying until I find the perfect brand… but who has time for that? There is also the option of buying the specialty porcelain pens but until I have a whole crockery set to do I think they are a bit pricy for just 1 project.