One of my favorite tricks is to place runes on a drinking cup, disposable or reusable, as way to incorporate helpful magic into a daily action. I actually came up with this trick during my college years, as a way to help with study, research, and paper writing. It is a great way to turn any liquid into the mead of inspiration.

Items you will need:

A cup or mug (in college mine was solid insulated large plastic mug, with a snap on lid)
A red marker or sharpie

Optional
paper
clear adhesive tape
red enamel or paint
paint brush
home made stencil

I highly recommend that you choose the runes you wish to place on the mug. You can choose based upon meaning or symbolism, or by asking the runes for their suggestions. If you can write directly on the cup, just take the marker and write directly on the cup. If you decide to repeat the rune combination, traditional numbers of 3, 8, or 9 are recommended, but you can use any number combination you want. You can also write out each rune separately, or create a bind rune incorporating all of runes, which also be placed singly or in repetition across the mug.

If the mug you choose is not one you can write directly on (finished ceramic, glass, horn, finished wood etc…) you do have options on how to get the runes on there. You could place the runes on a piece of paper, which you affix to the bottom of the cup (at least, that is where I would put it) using clear tape, which you could use to cover the paper completely, thus sealing pretty well to the mug. You could also paint the runes on, using a paint that would be difficult to remove from the item, like long lasting enamel, or creating a stencil of the runes; you could even spray paint them on, very carefully if you wanted.

You may notice that I indicate red as the color to use. This is a historical shade (in the ancient past it would have been blood or red ochre). You can use other shades, but from my experience, using red produces the best results.

As far as suggestions for what runes to use, there are a lot of possibilities. From a certain perspective, you could use the ALU formula, often considered to be alerunes or olruna. Ale-runes are often considered to be runes of spiritual power and protection, and potentially also for inspiration. This is a formula that appears often in runic inscriptions and is often considered to be magical. If you consider the runes of the formula A – Aesc L – Laguz and U – Uruz, it is a formula with great potential, as well as the word together ALU, suggesting ale (a type of alcohol, comparable to beer or mead) it also ties to the mead of inspiration. I also think you could use a variant OLU (Oss, Laguz, and Uruz) for similar purpose.