Homemade Etched Glass Gifts

Homemade etched glass gifts are a great option this year. These etched glass gifts are so easy with personalized stencils for glass etching made with a Cricut.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to make stencils for etching glass; and I’ll teach you how to do glass etching with Armour Etch.

Using glass etching cream with custom made glass etching stencils gives you personalized gifts that everyone will love. DIY glass etching is a great idea to try for homemade gifts.

These personalized glass etched pie plates are great for the recipients to use for taking dishes to pot lucks. Since their name is etched on the bottom, they’ll be sure to get the plate back.

If you’d rather watch than read, check out my YouTube video here.

Supplies for Etched Glass Gifts

Pie Plates – These are the Pyrex plates that I used. The Armour Etch product information says that it will not etch Pyrex but several people have reported that it worked and I didn’t have any problem. I’ve heard that if it has a capitalized Pyrex it won’t work but if the pyrex is lower case it will work fine.

Armour Etch

Removable Vinyl

Tools for Etched Glass Gifts

Cricut

Instructions for Glass Etched Pie Plates

I’m going to take you step by step through creating glass etched pie plates in this tutorial, but the process is the same for any type of item you want to etch.

Step One – Make your vinyl stencil

  1. I used a design I had purchased and just added the appropriate last name for my pie plates, but I was able to create a very similar design using images that come with the Cricut Access subscription. The red circle behind the design is a trick I learned to make sure that my design will fit on the item I am putting it on. Create a template with one of the basic shapes and size it appropriately for your item, in this case a 9” circle. I did the name in the Arial font.
  2. Cut your design out of removable vinyl using your Cricut. Make sure that you design is attached together so that it prints the way you want it to appear on your etched glass gifts.
  3. Reverse weed your design. You want to take out the portions of the vinyl where you want the glass etching to be leaving the “frame” around your design. Make sure to leave at least ½” all the way around your design. That way, you don’t have to worry about getting the etching cream where it isn’t supposed to be.

Weeding vinyl for handmade glass etched gifts

Step Two – Apply the Armour Etch etching cream

You want to apply a somewhat thick coating of the Armour Etch cream. Make sure that you use rubber gloves when applying the etching cream. It is an acid and will burn your skin. The bottle says wait for 1-3 minutes. I found it worked better if you let it sit for at least 5 minutes.

Applying Armour Etch to pie plate

Step Three – Remove the etching cream

  1. Once the time has expired, remove the etching cream with running water. This should be done with rubber gloves on also to prevent burns.
  2. Remove the vinyl from your glass gift item. Make sure to remove all of the little bits.Removing vinyl from glass etched pie plate
  3. Rinse your glass item once more to make sure that there is no Armour Etch left on the glass.

Final Etched Glass Gifts

Your etched glass gifts are now finished. All you have to do now is decide how you want to present your gift. For me, I decided to fill the pie plate with Christmas cookies and wrap the entire gift in cellophane wrap tied off with a ribbon for presentation.

 

Want some more craft project options, check out these posts.

 

 

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13 Comments

    1. Hi Jill. I did do my etching on the outside of the pie plate although It will work on the inside also. Challenges on the outside are that you have to remember to mirror and the raised wording on the plate sometimes caused clumps of the etching cream. I was concerned about them wearing with use if they were on the inside but have since learned that they wear fine on the inside. Hope that helps you decide what to do.

  1. I love to make personalized gifts for the holidays. Now that you shared how easy it is to make etch glass I cannot wait to try it.
    Pinning for later.
    Merry Christmas,
    Kippi