An Easy Gift Everyone Will Love…

Finally becoming a stay at home mom this past November was both the greatest thing I had done up to this point in my life and the most difficult. Great because I now got to spend every day with my children, but difficult because with only one household income everything from buying socks to going out to dinner and making our new house a home was going to be that much more challenging. And that wasn’t even with the pressure of the holidays around the corner. However, I was up for the challenge.

These past holidays taught me to 1) not only be a little more wise when it came to spending but 2) to actually take the time to find (or make) more meaningful gifts to give to family and friends. Plain and simple, if I wasn’t going to get to splurge on cool gadgets, then my gifts’ awesomeness needed to surpass their frugalness.

Two of the gifts that I gave out this past Christmas that happened to be a big hit, were that of my sister and her husband. She likes her wine and he likes his Johnny Walker so I thought I would make them something special so that they can enjoy both. For her, I made a set of 6 of these…

And for him, I made a set of 6 of these shot glasses…

I bought these sets of 6 from Ikea. You can find the wine glasses here.Then I purchased plain black chalk paint from Home Depot (which I plan to use for some other projects as well).

I made sure the glasses were clean and used a small sponge brush to apply the chalk paint to the bases. I applied 3 separate coats allowing plenty of time to dry between coats, but all were completely painted in one day.

Here is what they look like wet.

Then once those were dry, I used the glass etching stencil kits and Armour Etch from Hobby Lobby to etch the glass with their initials. The Armour Etch is $19.99, but you can find it cheaper on Amazon, and I made sure to use my 40% coupon, plus I’m sure I will use it for something else. I applied the etching creme with a small artist brush like the one below.

Here is a close up of the stencils. They are reusable so you can use them again and again!

All you do is place the stencil the way you want it to show on the glass (like below) and apply the Armour Etch right on, making sure you don’t go over the stencil edges. If you have never worked with this before, be sure to wear gloves and protective eye wear. It is the consistency of Elmer’s glue so it won’t get messy at all, but you want to be sure to be safe when using it. Kids should be taking a nap while you are doing this too if you know what I mean.

Now, because the wine glass is round you may have bumps on your stencil, but just be sure they are on the outside of it, not where you will be placing your etching creme or else it will seep underneath it. You leave it on for a couple of minutes and rinse it off with hot water and that’s it!  You have a custom made gift. I made his a simple “R” for their last name and her’s a little more girly. When I wrapped them up, I made sure to include some chalk so that when they have guests over they can label everyone’s glass.

Now I want to make some for me! I barely used any of that etching creme either. I can’t wait to see what else I might come up with next! Here is the finished wine glass again…

Hope you liked this idea!

Your Latina,

Yami