Coffee is our ingredient of the season, and we’re slowly building up an awesome  archive of coffee posts! Today’s post doesn’t exactly include coffee, but just a slip of a bag of special beans in with this gift and the recipient will be oh so chipper on Christmas morning.

Today I wanted to share personalized DIY coffee mug that makes the perfect gift for the coffee and tea lovers in your life.

We went to our local paint-your-own-pottery shop and made mugs with the boys’ handprints on them. Each mug has two handprints : one from each kiddo. I then added a simple heart and the year to fill in some of the empty space between the hands. **We also did a very similar design on larger platters, and having the flat surface makes printing even easier.

How does it work?

Most paint-your-own pottery studios work the same way.

• They have a variety of pottery that’s waiting to be glazed. You pick out the pieces that you want to paint (in this case mugs or platters), and then you can use their glazes to paint designs on the mug.
• Once you’re finished with the painting, you leave your pieces to be fired and pick them up about a week later. So if you’re planning on making something as a Christmas gift, plan ahead and leave enough time for your piece to get fired.
• At the studio, you will pay for the pieces that you picked out as well as a “studio fee”, this is often a flat fee based upon how long you were in the studio.

The Handprint

Why this is a brilliant design:

• It’s personal! Grandparents love personalized gifts.
• It’s simple. That’s important for a few reasons: 1. it doesn’t take long to make each mug because 2. there aren’t any decisions to be made.
• There’s relatively little room for error. It’s ok if your 3yo’s handprint is a bit sloppy, that gives the mug even more character and will remind you of that crazy phase in your life.
• With a simple design like this, the kids know exactly what their role is, and so you won’t have to deny a million requests from them asking to paint something on the mug.

BUT your kids will likely want to have some ownership of the project, right? Let them pick their handprint color. If you don’t want the colors to be too crazy, pick a few that you’re happy with and then let them make the final decision. Or, give them a bit more freedom. In this case Alex wanted blue and red hands. It was easy to paint his hand half and half, and he was super happy to have made that decision.

General Tips

In total, I think we made at least a half dozen mugs and a couple of platters. Here are a few tips that made the whole process relatively easy and fun for all of us.

• go when the shop isn’t busy (mid-week, mid-morning worked for us!) – This is particularly helpful on your first visit when you’re figuring out where everything is in the shop and working on that first handprint. One of the employees in our store was about to walk me through the process on our first visit, and she even had some great tips for applying the glaze to the kids’ hands and getting a good print. ***One of her simple, but amazing tips was to let the kids squish their hands into a fist after you apply the glaze to their palm. They want to squish that glaze around so badly, so why not let them get it out of their system?
• go with a happy kid – always a good reminder to make sure that everyone has a full belly and isn’t sleepy
• set a realistic goal and take multiple trips -Yes, you’ll have to pay that flat studio fee each time, but it may be worth it if it helps you create great gifts and keeps everyone sane.
• keep your design simple… can’t state this enough when working with kids.
• let them get their painting aspirations out – this was something that I did on our first visit. I knew that the kids would really want to go wild with their own ideas, so I explained that they were each going to get a mug and were allowed to paint it however they wanted. They also understood the bigger picture and that they were going to put their handprints on all of the other mugs that would be given as gifts.

I can’t say enough about how much kids love to be involved in the making and giving of gifts. You can see the pride and joy all over their faces when they make something and it is appreciated by the person that receives it. The feeling that they get from making and giving will help them grow up to be generous (and creative) people.