I am an Irish girl through and through.  My grandmother happily lets everyone know that she is from Clarke County in Ireland in casual conversation.  I love decorating for St. Patty's Day, but I wanted to come up with a cute, unique gift for the two women in my life that help to take care of my daughter when I go to work every day.  I am extremely fortunate to have my parents within a forty-five minute drive.  Riley started going to my mom's every day once she was two months.  I never could have gone back to work so soon if I didn't have my mom watching her.  I went to work every day knowing that Riley's every need would be taken care of because of who takes better care of a little girl than a grandmother.  The second woman in our lives is a friend's mom who lives about ten minutes away.  She runs a daycare out of her home and Riley loves it there.  My friend and I cannot get over the similarities in our mothers.  They speak to Riley the exact same way, which for a child of routine is ideal.  So I decided on a little something for them.  I picked up mugs from the dollar store and racked my brain.  I saw a shamrock drawn from multiple hearts and a light bulb went off.

 

I started out by drawing a stem and a heart with swirls at the top with a green sharpie marker.  I initially drew it starting with the swirls at the top of the heart, but I found it was much easier to start from the base.

 

I then added another heart to the other side of the stem.

 

 

The final heart went in between the two hearts.

 

 

I continued drawing shamrocks in a vine like creation.  I wanted the shamrocks to create one large shamrock, but I actually like the way it came out so I was okay with the vine like creation.  The final step was to add the last name.  I free handed the name, which in retrospect I wish I had stenciled it on.   I'll make sure to the stencil the Shamrock and Irish Blessing Plate I plan on making.  The great thing about using a sharpie is that it can withstand the dishwasher and water.  You'd need to use a magic eraser and some elbow grease to get off.  I only know this because of a Christmas gift I got for my parents where I needed to erase a name from ceramic.  The magic eraser is a god send by the way because it's a sponge that has cleaning materials already embedded within it.

 

 

I also did the back side of the mug so that it wasn't empty.