How to Vinyl Wrap a Coffee Mug (Without Wrinkled Vinyl)

If you love the look of animal print, but don't have a sublimation printer and mug press, you can still add striking animal print patterns to your coffee mugs - just use adhesive vinyl and your Silhouette Cameo!

So, for all you animal lovers out there, here's how to do it.

Measure Your Mug & Trace the Pattern

First, wrap a tape measure around the widest part of the mug to measure how wide your vinyl needs to be. Then, measure how tall the mug is to get the height measurement of your vinyl. To give yourself a little leeway, add an inch or so to the measurements just to make sure you cut enough vinyl to cover the mug.

Next, open the animal print file in Silhouette Studio and resize it to the appropriate measurements you just took of your mug. For this coffee mug, I used one of the tiger stripe animal print patterns from the Mug and Tumbler Designs Bundle.

You can find a total of 19 animal print patterns (and so many more designs) in the Mug and Tumbler Designs Bundle over at SoFontsy.

This tiger stripe animal print pattern is a PNG file, which is an image file because it really meant to be a fill pattern and the perfect file format for printing this design on sublimation paper for pressing.

However, a PNG file is not a cut file. See what happens when you go to the Send panel? The only cut lines (red outlines) that appear is a big rectangle around the edge of the whole design (which is not what we want). We want the individual tiger stripes to be cut out.

So, to create cut lines around the tiger stripes, you need to trace this image.

Open the Trace Panel from the right tool bar. Click Select Trace Area and drag a box around the entire animal print pattern.

Since this image file has very high contrast, the trace is very easy, and you shouldn't need to make any adjustments. Just click the Trace button and then red lines will appear around the black stripes. Click into the black part of one of the stripes, then drag it down and away from the red lines.

When you click one of the red lines, you can change the fill and outline color of them to black. While the traced tiger stripes may now look exactly the same as the original file, when you go to the Send Panel, you'll see that now a red outline (cut lines) appears around each of the stripes. 

Be sure to delete the original PNG file (or move it off your mat) before sending this design to your Silhouette Cameo for cutting.

I'm using patterned permanent adhesive vinyl, but you can use any color of permanent vinyl that you like. Load your mat, then send to cut.

After cutting, do not weed the vinyl. If your printed vinyl has a white border around the edge, just use a paper trimmer to trim that part off so that all that remains is the colorful pattern.

Prepare Your Mug for Vinyl

Now, take your mug and line either side of the handle with a 1/8-inch-wide strip of tape like Scor Tape. Then, line the top and bottom edge with 1/4-inch-wide Scor Tape. These strips of tape will create guidelines for trimming off the excess vinyl later.

Usually you would use transfer tape to move the vinyl onto the mug, but we are going to hand place each of the stripes.

Peel up one of the stripes from your cut vinyl and begin wrapping it around the mug. Start applying it at one of the 1/8-inch Scor Tape strips and be sure to overlap the vinyl over the tape a little.

Press the vinyl stripe down firmly as you wrap it around the mug. The vinyl is pliable so you can slightly stretch it around the mug to make it lay completely flat. If you’re using printed vinyl, then don’t scrape the vinyl down too hard so you don’t scratch the pattern. If you didn't get the placing quite right at first, you can lift the vinyl stripe and re-place it.

Next, pick up another vinyl stripe and lay it across the mug just like the previous one, but leave a little gap between the two pieces. Repeat this process until you've covered the mug with the striped pattern, leaving a gap between each of the vinyl stripes.

If you find one of the vinyl stripes is too long and difficult to work with, you can always trim it with scissors first before laying it down. Just don’t leave any hard-cut lines in the vinyl, round them off with the scissors, and no one will even know you trimmed them down.

Burnish and Trim the Excess Vinyl

When the vinyl animal print has been applied to the mug, burnish the vinyl to the mug very, very well. Also, burnish the vinyl where it overlaps the pieces of Scor Tape. When you burnish this area well, you will see an impression of the Scor Tape in the vinyl where it overlaps underneath it.

Take a sharp craft knife and run the blade along this impression in the vinyl. Because Scor Tape has a little bit of "thickness" to it, you can gently rest the side of the blade against the Scor Tape as you run it along the tape's edge to cut off the excess vinyl.

Use a sharp blade, work slowly, and be careful. Cut off the excess vinyl along either edge of the handle and around the top and bottom as well. Remove the excess pieces of vinyl and then remove the pieces of Scor Tape.

Then, burnish the edges of the vinyl along where you trimmed them and then admire your handy work! What a gorgeous custom animal print pattern on this coffee mug.

You will want to be sure to let the vinyl cure for about 72 hours before using or gently hand washing (only) the mug!

Why lay the vinyl stripes one at a time?

At first, I tried to apply the vinyl stripes to the mug all at once with a piece of transfer tape - just like a regular vinyl decal. It was a big mess! The problem is the mug is slightly tapered which makes it almost impossible to get the transfer tape and vinyl stripes to lay down smoothly. The transfer tape buckled, and the vinyl stripes started to overlap and stick to each other. I spent more time pulling up and re-placing the transfer tape, than I did when I just applied each stripe individually. 

Additionally, when you try to apply the stripes all at once with transfer tape, you have to weed out the excess vinyl between the stripes. When you place each stripe individually, you don't need to weed, and you can actually use the vinyl between the stripes as stripes on another mug - so no waste!

Surprisingly, after making the second mug I had even more vinyl leftover than I thought so I had enough to make a third mug!

There are many more animal print patterns in the Mug and Tumbler Designs Bundle, plus so much more that they really isn't a reason to drink out of plain boring mugs and tumblers again. This bundle is sure to make all your mugs and tumblers look fabulous. Check out the bundle over at So Fontsy before it ends on July 13.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I receive a small commission. That's what helps fund Silhouette School so I can keep buying new Silhouette-related products to show you how to get the most out of your machine!

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