The other day I went in to Michael’s in Wasilla. I went in looking for tiny frames for some of my tiny original artwork. All artwork looks better framed, but the tiny ones are so fun to frame. I don’t know if it’s the size or that I really only frame the tiny ones that are my favorite or what, but they are cute.

While there I decided to wander over to the sublimation aisle and see if there was anything new. Nothing new, but they did have some nice looking travel mugs in 2 sizes. These were stainless steel, with lids and handles. Different than the water bottle tumblers I’d been using.

I have sublimated on this type of item for other businesses but never purchased any for my own, so I decided to buy a couple of each size and just see how I liked my artwork on them.

Sublimating on products is a bit different than just making prints. There are a few things I look for in picking my art for sublimation:

Orientation

Depending on the product I’m sublimating on, the orientation of the artwork matters. The mugs and short wide products need a horizontal piece of artwork, or sometimes I use 2 smaller vertical ones so there’s a related image on each side. Tall tumblers I try to use a vertical piece of artwork. Some products don’t require a certain orientation like towels and Christmas ornaments.

Background or Not

This really depends on the product. I paint a lot of paintings with no background, a lot with a minimal background, and some with a full background. I find that I prefer the sublimated products mostly without backgrounds unless the image can wrap almost completely around or cover the product almost completely. However, there are some images that have full background that I love (as you’ll see today).

Product Base

There are so many products you can sublimate on. I’m always up to try new things, but I’ve found that not all products work well with my artwork. I love the stainless steel tumblers and travel mugs. I love the waffle towels. I love making Christmas ornaments. One thing I thought I would love is puzzles. I have learned though that puzzles require quite a bit of contrast to make them easier to assemble, my artwork doesn’t lend as well to that.

Last night I printed 4 pieces of artwork to sublimate onto the travel mugs. First, I made the mistake of not measuring the diameter or height of my mugs. I was in a hurry as I was also sublimating ceramic mugs for someone else. I ended up with only 2 usable prints.

After finishing up as many ceramic mugs as I wanted to do last night, I sublimated my own. I really love how the stainless steel tumblers sublimate. The images are crisp and full of color. These mugs were no exception. They turned out fantastic. My daughter came up this morning and saw the fireweed one and commented on how much she liked it.

The fireweed is a full image with background, you’ll see that around the handle there is no image, but in this instance, it doesn’t bother me. The mushrooms have no background and I love the clean look. Both pictures had a horizontal orientation. The shorter mug was perfect, and the taller one, because it had no background, didn’t need any adjusting either.

I love how these turned out. What do you think, would you purchase something like this?

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