Glass Etching

Doing glass etching on various projects is a great way to personalize gifts. It’s fairly easy to do, but you do need to be very careful with the etching cream.

I had this glass totem that I made over a year ago. I googled to find a garden phrase and found “Friends are the flowers in the garden of life”.

Decide on a stencil

The image was designed  in my Silhouette Studio Designer Edition. I was cutting this out on my Portrait, so I did  it in two different cuts. After I cut it like this, I rotated it to cut the other half. Note: the “g” in garden,  I didn’t make my outer most circle quite big enough.

Can you see the words? It’s tough to see white on white.

Apply Stencil

I actually ended up cutting out one word at a time and applied it without transfer paper. Because I do stenciling all the time, it was easy for me. This vinyl is VERY sticky and a little difficult to re-position. After applying each word, I transferred the oodles and boodles. (insides of the letters)

Spread etching cream with plastic knife

There were a couple of places I had to “patch” with a small sliver of the vinyl—where the letter was too close to the edge, and where the two words didn’t come together perfectly. I didn’t want the etching cream to bleed though the edges of the stencil.

After donning rubber gloves I used a plastic knife to apply the etching cream to the stencil.

Use a cotton swab to clean up smudges

There were a couple of places I got too close to the edge, and used a Q-tip to clean it up.

Rinse Etching Cream with garden hose

I scraped the excess etching cream back into the bottle, it’s reusable. It’s best to do this outside (away from pets and plants).

Carefully, I rinsed the etching cream off with the hose. I have used etching cream before and learned the hard way that you shouldn’t rinse it in your sink. When you  have a porcelain sink  the etching cream can leave visible damage.

Admire your glass etching project!

I love how this glass etching turned out! There are so many applications for glass etching. Think candy dishes, dog/cat treat bowls, oh and I did glass etching on a  baking dish for jamie years ago.

gail

See more repurposed glass project ideas here