One of my very favourite people recently got engaged. I gave her and her fiance these champagne flutes, which are etched with their initials, as part of their engagement present. I wanted to share them here, not only because I love my friends and am so happy for them but because etched glassware is a perfect, easy, personalized gift to give this holiday season. Monogrammed pint or wine glasses paired with craft beer or a nice bottle of cabernet (or a beer-of-the-month subscription or a trip to a winery…) would be appreciated by any hostess or friend. I made scotch glasses for my dad last year for Christmas and he loved them. You can also etch glass casserole dishes, tumblers, mirrors, etc.
Tutorial:
Note: Many of the etching tutorials that I’ve seen say to use contact paper to make your stencil. I used it when making my dads’ glasses, but I had a really hard time smoothly cutting out the design with my x-acto knife, so for the champagne flutes, I wanted to find an easier way. I have a bunch of alphabet stickers lying around from other projects, so I used the outline of the letters ‘m’ and ‘b’ (the sticky outline around the actual alphabet sticker), which conveniently stuck flush onto the flutes.
You’ll need glassware, etching cream (I used Armour Etch, purchased at Michael’s with one of their ubiquitous 40% off coupons), a stencil of what you want to etch, and a paint brush.
1. wash and thoroughly dry glassware
2. stick stencil to glass. make sure it adheres smoothly and completely.
3. use painting or masking tape to mark off the area around the stencil, ensuring that the etching cream doesn’t go past the desired area
4. paint a thick layer of etching cream inside in the stencil. brush up and down then side to side and make sure you get into all the little corners. this is why it’s important to have your stencil sticking firmly to the glass because if you don’t, the etching cream will bleed under the edges
5. let sit for 5 minutes. watch it to make sure your etching cream doesn’t drip down which it might do if you have a really thick layer. if you get it elsewhere on the glass, you can’t remove it! this happened to me the first time I tried to make the ‘m’ and I had to start over with a new flute.
6. wash cream off in tap water, then peel off tape and stencil. wash any remaining cream off.
7. as I mentioned in my post about coasters, I have a surplus of old New Yorker magazines in my room. when wrapping these, I tore out short story from one issue and crumpled the pages up to help protect the glasses. the Murakami story I used was four pages long, so I put two pages in each flute, which fit perfectly. I made sure to leave a little note to let my friends know that if they smoothed out the pages, they’d have a something new to read.
I’m sorry I don’t have many pictures (I am awful at both step-by-step photography and photography in general), so here are two tutorials with pictures: HAO + YHL
I also love these unique and gorgeous alternatives! Click through for the links.
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