Today’s photo market has a plethora of options for turning your own photography and art into home decor and useful household items. For me, this is where being an artist comes in handy, as I have plenty of my own designs to choose from.
Perhaps I should start with a simple truth: I like mugs. This is fact. I collect mugs like some collect shoes. I have mugs I prefer for coffee, big oversize mugs for tea, seasonal mugs for Halloween, Christmas, winter…well, you get the idea. Plus, you can use a pretty mug for a short-stemmed flower vase. When I discovered I could use my art prints and photography to make my own mugs on Shutterfly? I was giddy. Here are the mugs I have created so far:

Shutterfly allows you to choose from two sizes of ceramic mugs; all of mine are 8 oz. mugs. They can remain white like the leaf mug on the end, or they can have different colored backgrounds and/or handles.
For the butterfly mug, I used the same image twice to wrap around the mug, choosing black to off-set the butterfly and provide a more striking (and elegant) presentation.


For the leaf mug I used the same image three times as a wrap, using Shutterfly’s image editor to rotate the leaf image–making it seem to tumble around the mug. I kept the background white to highlight the minimalist design.


In my Halloween mug, I used the image only once, but added a yellow handle and interior to echo the feel of the giant harvest moon. The yellow of the mug doesn’t quite match the yellow of the moon, but it was a difference I could live with.

The images used are my original artwork. You may find these prints in my online gallery using the following links:
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- Painted Maple Leaf
- Butterfly Art Photography
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- Bird Wizard
All artwork © 2015 Catherine Jeltes, Gallery Zoo Art. All Rights Reserved.