That time I had a funny idea for a mug and it ate five months of my life

Way back towards the end of March, when everything was starting to feel like a dystopian nightmare, I had this idea to put a couple of variations of “what the fuck” on a mug. I was just kind of joking when I said it, but a bunch of people immediately were like THIS IS THE OFFICIAL MUG OF 2020 AND I MUST HAVE ONE and since I’m never one to say no to a challenge….

… but I tell ya what, y’all. This challenge was almost too much for me. Although shorter in time than a few years ago when my yarn ball cups were featured in a magazine and I got 14 months worth of custom orders – because they were slow going, making… this was definitely more work.

I mean, I thought I’d make a couple dozen, and people would laugh, and maybe half of them would sell, and the rest I’d bring to shows and sell to that one random person now and then. I didn’t know that I’d sell out in hours, and get people clamoring for more, and that I’d diligently be making more but that my kiln would crap out on me twice in the space of about six weeks, or that because of the pandemic it would be hard to get certain glaze colors because of company closures, and I’d have to make things in different colors each time because I just couldn’t guarantee having enough of the same glaze color to do large batches.

Above is a little gallery, it should be most of the kiln firings I did with the WTF mugs, some custom order and some regular stock, with the exception of maybe three photos because our Internet hates me tonight and doesn’t want me to upload anything (seriously, it took me two episodes of Season 11 Doctor Who to get all those uploaded). There’s also another set of ones that look like the light green one in the last photo, but for some reason I haven’t photographed them all yet (the purples aren’t selling out, though, so I’m in no rush. I just wish I’d done it already so I could show them off to you.)

Overall, I’m proud of my idea and I’m proud of my work – except for all the problems… all the custom orders that took longer than I expected because of kiln problems… all the mugs I had to make and mail out twice because of kiln and glaze problems that didn’t show up for days after firings… those I feel very bad about. But for the most part this has been fun, good for business, taught me a lot ( A LOT ), and now that the rush for them is starting to slow down and I can catch up on some other things that had fallen by the wayside.

Just in time for me to have another wild idea…..! *steeples fingers and chuckles maniacally*