Hi and Hello! Today we’re going to be talking about an item I don’t have in our shop on Etsy yet. Etched Glass Cups! I’ve been etching glass cups for a while and have made several cups for several people already. It’s something simple I really love to do. I’ve made etched glasses for several occasions and for different people. I even made myself and my husband Mr. and Mrs. cups for our wedding last year along with a Mrs. wine glass for one of our customers.
Etching can be a fast or slow process depending on how much you want on it, how big your stencils are, the size of your cup, how many cups you wang and so on. At first while doing them I went pretty slow. I was very timid with what I did but as I went on I learned that as long as I made sure the names were strait and the designs looked good then I didn’t need to be worried! It was actually my first large cup order that I learned that with. Our first customer at The M.O ordered 7 cups! It was pretty amazing honestly. Now let’s get into some of the things that make etched glasses.
Etched glasses take several things to make them look the way they do. You need etching cream, good stencils and stencil brushes, lots of painters tape, and most importantly rubber gloves. Etching cream can cause serious injury if you get it on your skin. With that being said, I’m definitely not that careful and I don’t always wear gloves. I have smallish medium hands and I can’t ever get a glove that fits me right and I’ve almost messed up a glass because my glove got caught in the cream and smudged it. My saving grace was that I had enough painters tape covering the rest of the glass that it didn’t matter.
Why painters tape? We’ll let me explain! When you’re doing etched glasses, you only want the etching cream in a certain place. So, say you have a nice mug, you need to clean it first with soap and water, then after you dry it, you need to clean the places you’re going to put your stencils with rubbing alcohol. After your stencils are places you need to put painters tape around the stencils. Anywhere that you don’t want that etching cream, you need to cover it. After that you’re all set to start putting the cream on!
The type of stencils you get and use is also very important. Good quality stencils is what makes or breaks your glass. Through trial and error I learned that you definitely should not use plastic non adhesive stencils on mugs, or cups at all. With plastic stencils you can only tape down the outside which is a problem if that stencil has multiple small inner lines, like letters, numbers, or intricate designs. Why? Well because you can’t tape those down. The glasses are rounded which cause the inside parts of your stencil to stick up and move around every time you stroke the brush on it which makes the cream run under those parts of the stencils, and you essentially lose whatever design you had. BUT! Plastic stencils work just as great as adhesive ones when you use them on flat surfaces like mirrors, windows, or picture frames!
Self adhesive stencils are best when you want to do cups. They’re just like stickers, you place them where ever you want them and boom, you don’t have to worry about any part of them moving around as long as you’re not placing intense pressure while brushing the etching cream on. Now what makes the self adhesive’s different than actual stickers is, you can reuse them multiple times. That’s right! With adhesive stencils you don’t have to worry about them losing their stick. Depending on the brand you use, you can use adhesives 20+ or so times if you take care of them.
I use FolkArt and Martha Stewart brand adhesive stencils and between the two, I have to say FolkArt is my favorite. The font for the letters are very cute and really make your glasses look amazing. They also have pretty great holiday stencils that I use too. They’re very resilient and there’s no discoloration on them from either brand of etching cream. The only thing about FolkArt is, that their letter stencils don’t come in packs of two. Not that I’ve seen yet anyway. I had to buy my capital and lowercase letters separately which can get pretty pricy.
Now, I’m not saying the Martha Stewart brand is bad. It’s definitely not. I like the block letter font that I picked up. Another thing with this brand is that you get two sheets of stencils in one pack. Like my block letters came with the capital and lowercase letters, the same goes for the holiday stencils too. Almost all the Martha Stewart stencils will come in two packs depending on what you’re looking for. My issue with the Martha Stewart stencils is, discoloration. I have a single set of cursive letters that aren’t as thick as my block letters and after only using the M a couple of times, the gray has started to discolor and chip away making it hard to use the stencil and the adhesive is running out faster than the smaller letters.
As for Etching creams, there isn’t really a difference between the FolkArt brand and the Armour Etch brand. The only real difference between the two is that with FolkArt Etch Cream, you need to keep it on for 15 minuets and the color it leaves on the glass is a nice lighter white. Whilst the Armour Etch only needs to be on for 3 minuets max and is a more solid defined white. Both are really great honestly and both creams are dishwasher safe, so your etched designs won’t come off!
Our Etched Glasses are always available even though they aren’t on our Etsy shop yet! There are several different ways you can get ahold of us and request an etched glass order. You can go to our Contact Page here on the website and email us or you can send us a message over any of our social media accounts! I’ll send you prices of our etched glasses and what we have available and what stencils we have for you to choose from!
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