In October last year, I shared photos of my old and not so old mood boards that decorate the home office wall and serve as a reminder of who I was and sometimes still am. These aren't the only relics that I decorated with things that interest me. Seven years ago, I designed these two mugs to enjoy while sipping my tea:

I wanted take a moment to acknowledge their positive effect on the daily start of the day, because very soon they might disappear. I've ordered them quite a while ago, and the printed part is sadly starting to fade and detach from the mug itself. I'm not sure whether or not that's the result of daily heavy use or the work of our dishwasher. If it gets worse (or if they break), I'll have to scour my hard drive for the original design and re-order them.

The left model is my favorite: both the drawings and the size of the mug. I drew our cat, a parsnip, ravioli, a Game Boy cartridge, chickpeas, my glasses with programming language abbreviations (nerd!), my chef's knife, a slice of sourdough bread, three cards (relevant to the card game Kingen, of course), a tea bag pyramid, my notebook, my Lamy Safari fountain pen, more pasta pieces, and a swirled lightbulb that represents having and catching ideas. The background consists of multiple swooshes of watercolor ink in different shades of green.

I know this sounds silly, but drinking from my home-designed tea mug is one of those little things that brightens my day---and netted me more than a few nice comments when I brought it to work. If you're fed up with mundane and uninspired mugs or corporate logos, I highly recommend you to try it out yourself. I simply drew stuff, scanned it in, and re-arranged it. If I can do it...

Bottoms up!