Tag Archives: ceramic

Darth Vader Chrome Ceramic Mug: The Shiny Side of the Dark Side of the Force

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What’s better than sipping coffee from a Darth Vader helmet mug? Sipping coffee from a chrome-finish Darth Vader helmet mug. The Sith Lord’s black outfit is so shiny you could comb your hair in its reflection, but this mug is even more reflective thanks to its mirrored ceramic finish.

I like to imagine Vader walking around his Imperial Star Destroyer like Bill Lumbergh in Office Space, sipping coffee from this mug while micromanaging the crew about missing cover sheets on their Imperial TPS reports and asking them to come in and work on the Death Star II on the weekend.

If you like your coffee dark, like your favorite side of The Force, you can grab the Darth Vader chrome mug on Amazon (affiliate link) for $19.99.

Like posting photos of your coffee on Instagram? This beautifully rustic ceramic + wooden cup is perfect for the gram

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Picture yourself at the foothills of the Himalayas, a bonfire in front of you, a sunrise ahead of you, a herd of yaks in the distance. You’re sitting with your Sherpa, sipping a perfectly brewed batch of coffee from your Mountain and Sea Coffee Mug.

If brewing coffee is an art, it only makes sense that the cup you drink it from does the brew justice too. Designed with an incredibly rustic sculptural appeal, Coffeify’s Mountain And Sea mugs come with a ceramic body and a wooden handle that exudes an earthy warmth. The ceramic mug is finished with a stone-like texture, and comes with relief-work of mountains and oceans on its base, while the cup itself sports a beautiful black to turquoise gradient glaze… with that wooden handle giving the design a wonderful finishing touch.

The mugs are available as a 3-piece set, featuring the mug itself, a lid to keep your beverage warm for as long as possible, and a removable container with a mesh base for being able to brew your coffee or tea. The ceramic mugs offer a heat resistance of up to 302°F (150°C) and are food-safe and microwave-safe (without the mesh).

All of Coffeify’s ceramic mugs are hand-made on a potter’s wheel, before being hand-finished with the stone-like texture. Finally, the cups are finished with a highly saturated glaze that doesn’t lose color or fade over time, before the wooden handle gets glued in place. The mugs are travel-friendly (just make sure you pack them safely), although Coffeify’s website mentions that they aren’t safe for the dishwasher, so they need to be washed/rinsed by hand. The mugs hold up to 450ml of liquid (that’s slightly less than a Starbucks grande) and are available for a discounted $49 on Coffeify’s website.

Designer: Coffeify

Excel at Sipping Coffee with the Spreadsheet Shortcut Mug

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I like to think I’m pretty adept at Microsoft Excel.  Whenever I show some neophyte how to use a Pivot Table, I feel like a spreadsheet god. Despite my skills at manipulating rows, columns, formulas, and macros, I don’t have all the Excel keyboard shortcuts memorized. I mean sure, I’m a master of Copy, Paste, and Undo, but after those, I don’t remember most of them. Now, every time I go to take a sip of hot coffee, I can brush up on my spreadsheet shortcut knowledge.

Firebox sells this Excel Shortcut Mug which lists a number of the available keyboard shortcut sequences for Excel, including classics like “Ctrl Shift +” and “Alt F1.” I had no idea that you could copy a value from the cell above with “Ctrl Shift Quote.” Heck, I’m already smarter and I haven’t even bought this thing yet. Next stop, creating complicated and abstruse financial models that make venture capitalists throw fat stacks of cash at me.

Like all ceramic computer reference materials, the Excel Shortcut Mug holds 12 oz. of your favorite hot or cold beverage and is dishwasher and microwave safe. You can grab one for your desk today over at Firebox for just $11.

 

These Terrazzo Wireless Chargers look like artisanal decorative coasters that can charge your phone!

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I guess these Terrazzo Wireless Chargers from Bentu Design put the tech in archi’tech’ture! Designed as a neat fusion of consumer tech and home-decor, Bentu Design’s W10 charger comes with an exterior made from Terrazzo, a unique composite of concrete with marble/ceramic/stone chips suspended within. The terrazzo exterior gives the W10 almost a coaster-like appearance, allowing it to wirelessly charge your phone while acting as a nifty little decorative element on your tabletop.

The W10 charger’s terrazzo exterior uses concrete mixed along with recycled ceramic particles, cement construction waste, quartz fragments, and other crushed stones, most of which are virtually useless. By binding these waste particles into concrete, China-based Bentu Design has perfected the art of repurposing trash and making well-designed products out of terrazzo. Bentu noticed that globalization, and an increased demand for ceramic pieces, had driven a wave of new factories in Chaozhou… creating jobs, but also dramatically increasing the amount of ceramic waste produced. The name ‘Bentu’ translates to ‘native’, as the studio focuses on understanding and using raw materials that are local.

The terrazzo W10 chargers come in 4 colors – white, green, blue, or orange, with ceramic and quartz particles randomly suspended in the concrete. The natural beauty of this randomness makes each X10 unique and one-of-a-kind. Under its bespoke speckled exterior, sits a Qi-compatible charging coil, available in 5, 7.5, and even 10W outputs, and the coil connects to a power source via a discreet USB-C plug located in the charger’s side. Each W10 measures 10mm in thickness, and weighs a mere 210 grams. It’s pretty enough to be mistaken for a coaster, although I’d probably ask you to caution your guests against placing any hot cups filled with coffee/tea on them. There’s no clarity on whether the X10 is waterproof, although I kind of hope it is!

Not only is the X10 made from recycled ceramic/stone scrap, it’s also designed to be repurposed/recycled too. After the wireless charger’s service life is over, the internal circuit board and electronic components can be extracted by gently breaking apart the terrazzo shell. The shell itself can be smashed into chunks and reused in another terrazzo piece, giving it a fresh life altogether. Moreover, to reinforce the X10’s sustainable approach, the wireless charger even comes in fully recycled all-paper packaging.

Designer: Bentu Design

The Mandalorian Grogu with Egg Canister Cat Grass Chia Pet: Wait, Is This The Way?

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It doesn’t matter what the product is, if it’s Mandalorian-themed, people are going to buy it. Case in point: this Chia Cat Grass Planter featuring Grogu with the egg canister he wanted to eat from so badly. Did anybody else wonder what those giant eggs tasted like? I mean Grogu made them look pretty good.

Don’t have a cat? There are also two regular Grogu Chia Pet planters available: one of him posed with raised hand using The Force, and another standing in Mando’s satchel. Available for pre-order from Entertainment Earth (shipping in October), each Chia Pet costs $20 and is sure to let guests know that, yes, you will buy absolutely any Star Wars product available for sale.

Of course, these Chia Pets are in addition to the already existing Grogu in hover stroller one. Hey, you can never have too many Mandalorian Chia Pets – that’s my motto. Granted it’s not a very good motto, but I’m still going to get the tattoo because I’m committed.

[via GeeksAreSexy]

Ghostbuster Slimer and Terror Dog Mugs: Who You Gonna Drink From?

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You’ve just spent a long day busting ghosts; what do you want when you get back to your firehouse base? Exactly, a nice cold drink out of a mug that reminds you of the day you just spent ghostbusting. And Middle of Beyond has just the vessels you’re looking for with these 24-ounce Slimer and Terror Dog ceramic drinking mugs. I can already feel Egon patting me on the back for a job well done, then taking it all back after he realizes I accidentally freed all the ghosts from the Containment Unit.

The Slimer mug is available in three different finishes (classic, $35; ectoplasm, $40; and ugly spud, $45), and Terror Dog is available in four (Gatekeeper Gray, $40; Keymaster Black, $45; Bronze, $45; and marshmallow, $50). Which is your favorite? I’m particularly fond of the ectoplasm Slimer and bronze Terror Dog, and I hope this serves as a pleasant reminder when my friends are shopping for birthday gifts.

Remember how scary the ghost in the library scene was at the beginning of Ghostbusters when you were a kid? It gave me nightmares. You know how the Ghostbusters theme song goes, ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts’? Well, that’s not true; I’m terrified of them: ghosts and my wife whenever she finds out what I bought on eBay behind her back.

These Ceramic Bookends Look Like More Books

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If you like to read, you probably have at least a few books lying around and not neatly placed on bookshelves. There are lots and lots of choices for bookends to keep them tidy, but I really like the idea of these bookends that look like books.

These fun Bibliophile Bookends were created by illustrator and shop owner Jane Mount for Chronicle Books. They’re great because no matter what books you have in your collection, you’ll automatically end up with classics like Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities, and Pride & Prejudice. Since they’re made from ceramic, they’ve got plenty of weight, which is of critical importance when it comes to bookends. After all, you don’t want them sliding around when you put books in between them.

The Bibliophile Bookends are available for $60 a set from Chronicle Books, though you might be able to find them for less on Amazon. If you love Jane’s art style, check out her book Bibliophile, which is a fantastic compilation of art and information about classic books, and some of the greatest bookstores to find them in. It also makes a great companion gift if you’re thinking of giving the bookends to a booklover on your shopping list.

The Best Part of Waking Up… Is Kraken in Your Cup

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Since it’s a fictitious creation, nobody really knows what a Kraken looks like. But the one thing we can all agree on is that the thing is a gigantic sea monster, and almost certainly has tentacles that it uses to snatch ships and drag them to the bottom of the ocean.

I think this Kraken tentacle mug does a great job capturing the spirit of this legendary sea beast, and has no need to show its body to get its point across.

The Kraken mug has a food-grade stainless steel cup insert, wrapped in a hand-sculpted food-grade resin. I love all of the details like the ship’s rivets, along with all of the suckers on the Kraken’s tentacles. Best of all, one of the tentacles serves as the mug’s handle. This mug is just one of the many creepy, morbid, and downright odd items featured in artist Michael Locascio’s Dellamorte & Co. Etsy shop.

It measures about 5.5″ tall, and holds 16 oz of your favorite beverage. I like the idea of some kind of rum since that’s all that pirates drink at sea, right? Yarrrrr! So if you want to be able to say “my mug has a Kraken it!” you can grab one of these cool drinking vessels over on Etsy for $45.

Creature from the Black Lagoon Tiki Mug Is Perfect for Swamp Water Punch

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If you’ve never seen The Creature from the Black Lagoon, you owe it to yourself to check out this classic monster movie. I like to think of the fish creature in Jack Arnold’s 1954 popcorn flick as the progenitor for the amphibian man in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Sure, it was for all practical purposes a B-movie, but the monster costume was a classic, and is still recognized to this day, some 65 years later.

Fans of the swamp creature who also enjoy tiki drinks will want to check out this awesome ceramic tiki mug.

Designed by Doug P’Gosh and Matthew Black for Tiki Farm, the hefty ceramic mug offers up a great likeness of the monster that came out of the swamp to steal away his love. It holds 16 oz., and measures 6.5″ tall, and is glazed in yellow and Gillman green. Despite the movie being shot in black and white, we’ve always assumed that the creature was this color too, but for all we know, he could have been shades of pink and purple. Not so scary now, are you?

The The Creature from the Black Lagoon mug is heading to Mondo in spring 2020, but you should be able to pre-order it soon. Keep an eye out on their website for order details – and be sure to check out all of the other awesome stuff they sell while you’re at it! And if you’re looking for a recipe for something to serve in your creature mugs, try some swamp water punch.

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