Covid Friendly Cups

Instructions

1. Create your design. We used Silhouette Studio with 'The Skinny' font, Amantic SC is very similar or use a font of your choice. Consider your vinyl when you select your font, the letters may be quite small so if you want to use an intricate font make sure you use a soft, thin film, a thicker more rigid film will work better with bolder text. There are thousands of fonts available at www.dafont.com
2. TOP TIP: Vinyl is not food safe so make sure your design doesn't sit inside the mug or where your lips will touch it.
3. TOP TIP: If you're new to this and your font is very small with lots of dots, accents or flourishes it may be worth cutting a few extra just in case you lose any when weeding.
4. Load your plotter, this is a good project to use up any small pieces of vinyl left over from other jobs so use the sticky mat to keep them secure and ALWAYS perform a test cut! Then cut your design, unload and peel the mat away from your vinyl - doing it this way prevents your vinyl from curling up.

5. Weed your design taking care not to lose any dots from your 'i's'!

6. Apply application tape, squeegee down firmly from the front and reverse then trim to size. If you want you can fold this in half in both directions and cut out a small piece of tape at the edges of the fold to mark your halfway position, this will help when lining up your design on the mug. Turn your design over and peel the liner slowly away from the application tape leaving the letters behind, if they start to lift squeegee again as you go or adjust the angle of peel.
7. TOP TIP: If your mug is conical or irregularly shaped it would help to snip some slits at regular intervals around the edges of your application tape, this will allow it to drape easily around the contours.

8. Firstly clean and dry your mug to remove any grease or fingerprints

9. Steady your mug on a soft surface so it doesn't roll around and line up your graphic, you can use the hinge method to apply here if you want to but it's probably small enough that you can position easily by eye then allow the middle of your design to drape onto the mug and smooth out to the edges.

10. Apply pressure to the design with your squeegee, rubbing over the whole surface then gently fold back a corner of the tape and slowly pull it back on itself, removing the tape and leaving the letters behind.

11. Now repeat for the reverse side.
12. Step back and admire your work, I would say get the kettle on but this should really wait 24 hours before using or washing to allow time for the adhesive to cure.Bear in mind that when you put hot liquids in the mug the vinyl will soften slightly so handle with care. We always recommend hand washing however I used ImagePerfect 5700 on my mug and it's stood up to the dishwasher so far! If you get bored with your design or change how you take your tea, simply fill your mug with hot water, wait a minute or so then carefully peel the letters off.