Spray Painting a Stainless Steel Mug

Hi Friends! Every so often I actually make stuff for myself.  Honestly, it’s hard making crafts to sell since I want to keep them all!  I really wanted to try spray painting a stainless steel mug so I decided to make it for myself (it has my name on it, so I have to keep it!).

In the past, I’ve painted Ozark mugs with chalk paint which you can find by clicking here since I hadn’t had success with spray paint.  But I found a few tips online and decided to use a different paint and I absolutely am in love with how it came out!!

Isn’t it pretty???  I had a lot of fun doing the ombre effect and of course using glitter paint!  Spray painting a stainless steel mug is super easy to do too.  Here’s how to do it!  If you want to really seal the glitter with epoxy, check out my tutorial here!

Materials for Spray Painting a Stainless Steel Mug with Glitter

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links from Amazon and/or walmart.com. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my links.

• Stainless steel mug – I use an Ozark that you can find by clicking here for 20 oz or here for 30 oz.  You can also use a Yeti.
• Rust-Oleum Protective Enamel Spray Paint, Light Turquoise or any color or your choice.  Make sure it’s the gloss protective enamel.
• Rust-Oleum Glitter Spray, Purple or any other color or glitter color
• Rust-Oleum Glitter Spray, Clear
• Vinyl decal if you want.  I use Oracal 631 and cut it with my Cricut Explore Air Wireless Cutting Machine
• Angel CraftsTransfer Paper

First thing to do if you want an image is to cut out a decal with vinyl or buy one off Etsy.  It’s so easy to make your cut your own images with a Cricut cutting machine.  (You can find my Ultimate Guide to Cricut Ideas here! Think gift ideas, decor ideas, wall art, Christmas, great apps to use with it, etc!)

Clean the mug with rubbing alcohol and apply the decal to the mug.  Click here for my video tutorial on how to apply vinyl to a tumbler.

Before I start painting, I tape off the top with blue painter’s tape or electrical tape because I don’t like my mouth to touch the paint.  Make sure it’s pressed down firmly.  Watch the video at the top if you need help with this part.

Go to a well ventilated area and place the mug upside down.  After you shake the paint, start spray painting the stainless steel mug from about 12 inches away.  Do a light layer moving around the mug.

Let it dry for about 10-20 minutes and paint another light coat.  It will need 2-3 coats.

If you want to watch a video of how I spray paint stainless steel tumblers click here!

Then I turned the mug over and added Glad press n seal around the top so that paint wouldn’t get in the mug.  With the glitter paint, spritz a light layer all over the mug.  Let dry for 10-15 minutes and spritz another layer from middle of mug to bottom.  Let dry and repeat again with spritzing just the bottom.

There is no right or wrong to this part.  It’s up to how you want it to look.  If you want it dark purple on the bottom, you need to add quite a few layers.

I made the mistake here of taking off the press and seal and tape.  I ended up adding it back on to spray the top coat on so just leave it on.  Let it dry and now it’s time to take off the vinyl decal.  

I used my weeding tool to lift an edge up and then slowly pulled it off using my tool to pull up the little swirly pieces.

Now spray a few coats of glitter sealer on, letting it dry between coats for about 20 minutes.  I did 2 coats.  It says it will dry to touch in an hour so don’t touch it before that.  

I did and now I have a small finger mark on my mug.  It’s so hard to wait sometimes!  The directions say to let it sit for 24 hours before handling it.

Since I took the tape off too early and had to put it back on, some of the sealer ran underneath the tape.  I used my favorite cleaning agent and a qtip to get it off.  

To read more about how amazing tea tree oil is to clean paint and sharpie with click here.

Now it’s all clean around the top!

So here’s a few pictures of the finished product front and back!!  See that little nick at the top?? That’s what happens when you have that small little tail of the tape that slips down.  

Make sure your painter’s tape is in one long straight line!  (I have since started using electrical tape since it’s a bit easy to maneuver).

I love how it came out and now my daughter is begging me to make her one… oh the possibilities!  Post pics of yours if you do one!

I recently applied epoxy to my glitter cups and it wasn’t as hard as I thought!  Check out  my full step by step plus video glitter tumbler tutorial here!

If you don’t like glitter, you can always just spray paint them!  Check out my tutorial here for how I  made these ones!

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great day!