Hi and Hello! Today we\u2019re going to be talking about an item I don\u2019t have in our shop on Etsy yet. Etched Glass Cups! I\u2019ve been etching glass cups for a while and have made several cups for several people already. It\u2019s something simple I really love to do. I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019s get into some of the things that make etched glasses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019m definitely not that careful and I don\u2019t always wear gloves. I have smallish medium hands and I can\u2019t ever get a glove that fits me right and I\u2019ve 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\u2019t matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why painters tape? We\u2019ll let me explain! When you\u2019re 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\u2019re 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\u2019t want that etching cream, you need to cover it. After that you\u2019re all set to start putting the cream on!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n