More Christmas gifts

Now that Christmas is over and everyone has their gifts, I feel it's safe to post some of the things I made.  I didn't take pics of everything (though I should have), but I'll post what I have.  First is this hurricane vase I made for my Mom.

Ok, I didn't make the leaves.  I just thought it looked pretty with the red candle.  Anyway, I followed this tutorial from The Idea Room on glass etching, and it was so easy!  The hardest part was cutting out the stencil, since I had to cut it by hand with an exacto-knife and it has a lot of detail.  All you do is cut your stencil out of contact paper (which can be done on a Cricut or any sort of machine like that, or by hand tracing and cutting).  Then you stick the contact paper to the glass, leaving the cut-out area exposed, and you slather on the etching cream.  (It's ok if you don't stay in the lines, as long as you don't get cream on any glass that you don't want etched.)  The instructions on the bottle say you only need to leave it on for about a minute, but in reality it takes 10-15 minutes to get a nice "dark" etch.

As suggested in the tutorial, the cream is re-usable.  After the first 10 minutes, scrape the cream back into the jar (I always just use one of the boys' old craft paint brushes), rinse the residue from the glass, see if it is as dark as you want it, then re-apply for 5 more minutes if needed.  Just be careful when you rinse not to let the stencil come off, in case you want to re-apply.  Cute and easy, right?

Ok... enough of my horrible picture-taking!

Check out my Craft board on Pinterest for more etching ideas... the possibilities are endless!