Making Colour-changing Mugs with the Cricut or Silhouette
This is a really fun project…it’s a colour-changing mug you can make on your cutting machine. Before you pour hot water into it, your mug is ‘asleep, with eyes shut, eye bags and frown lines. After you’ve poured hot water (and presumably, some caffeine-heavy sustaining beverage…OK, coffee or tea!) then the eyes become alert! Er…please excuse the mess in the background! It was a fun experiment…as it uses dishwasher-safe Mod Podge, the idea is that it should withstand a bit of cleaning. However, I wouldn’t test this and would handwash the mug carefully (mine is still fine but though I’ve cleaned it a few times I’ve handwased it OH so carefully!) As I say, though…it’s very fun!
To make a Colour-changing mug on your Cricut you will need:
- White mug
- Tiny amount of black vinyl
- Tiny amount of vinyl, any colour (to make a stencil with)
- Thermochromic pigment (in black)
- Dishwasher-safe Mod Podge
- Our FREE cut file (download it by filling in the form below):
Equipment to make the mug:
- Cutting Machine with Fine Point Blade (we used a Cricut Maker)
- Cutting Mat
- Painter’s Tape (also known as Masking Tape)
- Paint brush
Preparing the Cut File for your Colour-changing Mug:
- Open a New Project and click on ‘Import Images’.
- Choose the file you’ve downloaded – it’ll be ‘colourchangingmug.svg’ (or whatever format your machine uses). Your canvas will show the design.
- Click on the design on the canvas and choose ‘Ungroup’ from the top of the right-hand margin. Then, left-click and drag over the eyes, and click on ‘Attach’.
- Click on ‘Make It!’ and your cutting mat should look like this:
Assembling your Colour-changing Mug Design:
- Once you’ve weeded the design, attach some masking tape (otherwise known as painter’s tape) to the top of it.
- Remove the eyes from the backing sheet, and apply to the mug. Press down firmly all over, and then carefully remove the tape:
- You will be left with this…the ‘awake’ version of your mug!
- Now…I completely forgot to take a photo at the point when I placed the vinyl carefully over the eyes! You can see it in the picture below though…really, you just need to position the tops of the eyelids with the tops of the eyes, and press the vinyl down VERY carefully, paying attention to all the edges. Then, you need to apply a thin coat of a mix of black thermochromic pigment and dishwasher-safeMod Podge (my advice is to mix a TINY amount of each together…because you are going to need to make VERY thin coats applied sparingly. Here it is after one coat:
Leave it to dry thoroughly after each one. Don’t rush with this, or you’ll find your result is very ‘artisan’! Here (below) my mug is after two thin coats:
- It took me six thin coats to be solid black pieces…at which point I started to remove the vinyl:
- You have to take great care doing this as the Mod Podge mix forms a sort of plasticy film, and if you don’t remove the vinyl carefully then you can tear it off with the vinyl. However – this is a lot easier to avoid if you have applied thin coats.After a fair bit of wrangling, and cleaning off the edges, I ended up with this:
Want to have a go yourself? Download the FREE (for now!) file below:
And don’t forget to let us know how you get on making this or our other projects in the CraftAGoGo Crucial Crafting Facebook group!
